How to Train Your Marching Band
by A Frumious Bandersnatch
Summary: -Modern day AU-slight crack-blatantly Hiccup/Astrid- High school senior, section leader, band geek and sometimes dragon hunter. His life was already difficult enough to manage, but he really didn't need THIS on top of it.
1. Setting the Stage

**A/N: **Hello all! New readers, welcome! Thank you for scrolling all the way on someone's favorites list. Old readers, if you're coming back, welcome back.

Readers new and old should note that this story is undergoing some renovations and the existing nine chapters will be slowly re-uploaded with new content and/or a general facelift. Rewrites on the existing nine chapters were actually completed a few days ago and they have grown to encompass eleven chapters. Re-uploads will happen over the next few weeks.

Chapter one sports a general face-lift to bring the background up-to-date with my solidified headcanon.

Travis Church knows not what monster he wrought upon me.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own How to Train Your Dragon. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

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**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter One: Setting the Stage

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There was nothing quite like having the bedcovers ripped off you to serve as a morning wake-up call.

Hiccup reflexively flinched and curled up when the marginally cooler air whisked over him. He buried his face in the pillow, hiding his eyes from the early sunlight shining directly through the curtains.

"C'mon son! It's six o'clock and it's a beautiful day!" rumbled an impossibly loud voice less than a foot from his ear, causing Hiccup to pull the pillow completely over his head. He let out a grunt of a response that could have meant anything from 'I'm not conscious enough for this' to 'I'll strangle you with my bedsheets if you don't go away _now_'. But his tormentor was not easily deterred and proceeded to wrestle the pillow of his sleepy grip. It wasn't much of a struggle, sad to say.

"Nooo..." Hiccup protested feebly. He grabbed Floppy, the lop-winged Thunderdrum plush that had been sitting at the head of the mattress for years, ever since Hiccup had decided that he was too old to sleep with a stuffed animal. But he was far too attached to actually bin Floppy and the old plushie was always willing to faithfully serve as a sun-shield.

"Hiccup, do not make me pull you out of bed." warned the rumbling voice. It was deep and stern. It meant business.

Reluctantly, Hiccup folded back one of Floppy's wings and found that most of the immediate area had been swallowed up by a vast red beard.

"Dad..." he groaned. Of course, who else took delight in tormenting him this early in the morning? "Why did you do that?"

"You asked." Stoic replied simply. He dropped the pilfered blanket and pillow onto the floor instead of putting them back.

It took a second for Hiccup's sleep-muddled mind to catch up. Last night had been the first time he'd gone to bed before midnight in two months and he hadn't actually fallen asleep until late. Knowing that he would probably over-sleep on his own, he had asked for a wake-up call.

Just not like this.

"I need to stop asking you to do things." he mumbled.

Stoic didn't favor that with a reply and clapped a large hand on his son's exposed shoulder, shaking him out of any attempt to fall back asleep.

"It's six o'clock." he repeated. "Shower up. I want you out the door between seven-fifteen and seven-thirty."

"Seven-thirty? Dad, practice doesn't start 'til nine." Hiccup protested, putting Floppy aside and raising himself onto an elbow. "I can leave the house as late as eight-twenty-"

"You won't be doing anything of the sort, son. You're a senior this year and you're going to do this right." Stoic said firmly, his muscular arms crossed in the picture of parental stern-ness. "You have an example to set for your rookies and if arriving an hour early is the way to do it, then that's the way you're going to do it."

"My rookies are idiots." Hiccup grumbled. It was the truth. His rookies did a fabulous job of not knowing which end of the instrument to blow in to. He had been trying to whip them into shape all summer and he felt bad for leaning so heavily on Marie, his only veteran section-mate, for assistance.

"Then it'll take a good Haddock man to teach them!" Stoic boomed proudly, cuffing Hiccup so hard on the back that it completely negated his previous effort to sit up. "Make your ancestors proud! Show 'em what a Viking can do!"

"We're not Vikings!"

There was no use arguing the fact they were, in fact, descended from a tribe of Vikings who had inhabited a miserable spit of land that froze solid every winter. Direct descendants if their family name - the ever so charming moniker of 'Haddock' - had survived the centuries, more or less intact. Stoic took a great deal of pride in this knowledge. He considered it an honor to be able to say that their ancestors were true, red-blooded Viking men.

"Of course we are." Stoic said reassuringly, though Hiccup wasn't sure who his father was trying to reassure.

"Is that why you grew your beard out and adopted a Scottish accent?" he challenged

The large man froze, his mouth partially open, but it looked like the words had died en route. Hiccup must have been about five when his father had first begun to cultivate a Scottish accent, shortly after tracing the family tree back into the Viking age. But he didn't understand _why_ his father had chosen a Scottish accent. Berk (another charming name that should not have survived as long as it already had) was really closer to Iceland than Scotland.

But the accent and the beard fit his father to a T.

"Shower. Breakfast." was Stoic's somewhat meager retaliation. It was more due to having the last word than anything else. He squeezed his way out of the bedroom and shut the door for privacy.

The second it clicked shut, Hiccup covered his face again and groaned incoherently about the unfairness of it all. He had never really been a morning person and he was certain he had become less of one as he'd gotten older. Apparently, some scientific study had proven that teenagers were biologically wired to sleep in the late hours of the morning because of something like hormonal changes and being forced to get up at six or seven o'clock for school was counter-productive. He was sixteen going on seventeen and he still couldn't make himself get up on his own, but he was pretty sure he was out-growing the excuse of hormones.

_Okay Hiccup, get up. It's Monday morning, first day of band camp. You're a senior, you've been the section leader for the last three years - 'course, for the last three years, it had literally just been myself and Marie, and two clarinets does not a section make. Nonetheless, you've got responsibilities and examples to set, so get your ass out of bed and don't make Dad follow through on his threat._

The thought of Stoic returning and dragging him out of bed was enough to spur Hiccup to get up and start climbing out of bed.

He didn't roll out of bed. He never rolled out of bed. Not with that five-foot drop between him and the floor. When he'd been younger, he used to fall out of bed all the time, until Stoic finally decided he was tired of finding his son on the floor in the morning. In an effort to discourage this, a loft bed had been installed in Hiccup's room and the safety railings had done most of the work in keeping Hiccup squarely on the mattress all night.

His feet hit the carpeted floor and he stretched his limbs convulsively, loosening up every muscle until they felt like wrung-out dishrags. Then he grabbed the clothes he had left laying out the night before and hauled himself into the shower for a quick scrub.

Stoic was at the kitchen table when Hiccup finally made his way downstairs, his hair already starting to dry. The sixteen-year old paused in the doorway of the kitchen and took in what passed for a normal domestic scene around here.

It wasn't a normal scene by known standards, even for their situation. Even a widowed father who had all but reverted back to bachelor-hood might have been making a token attempt to cook up some breakfast or already had breakfast ready and had settled in to catch up on the morning news. Stoic was doing nothing of the sort. Instead, he was carefully polishing a collection of large, often serrated hunting knives, eyeballing the keen edges of the blades critically.

Hiccup wished his father wouldn't clean the collection of knives at the kitchen table. They ate food there and those knives got buried in a dragon's guts on a regular basis. The gods only knew what dribbled off them afterwards.

That and polish probably wasn't good for the digestion.

When it came to dragon hunting, Stoic Haddock was a real hands-on kind of guy. He liked to sneak up close and kill the dragon by his own strength, rather than hovering at a distance and relying on a gun. Most hunters were proud of their firearms and the distance from which they could take down a dragon; a method that was usually preferred by all involved. Nearly all the dragon targets were the ones who had gone rabid or mad or were being far too crotchety and territorial for the safety of the nearby humans. These dragons would thrash and scream and flame to the point where distance was the safest way to bring them down. But Stoic preferred his vast array of large, bladed weapons and the exciting stories that could be told from an up close and personal encounter with an angry fire-breathing reptile.

That was the Viking in him, he liked to say.

Hiccup liked to say that there was no conclusive proof that Vikings had ever hunted dragons.

He got himself a bowl of cereal and sat down opposite of the large knives. The small TV perched atop the fridge was tuned to the morning news, currently nattering about the weather. It was going to be hot and sunny all week; a slight chance of rain Saturday morning. Good, maybe that would wash out the Gay Pride parade. Hiccup had nothing against the local community of gays, lesbians and gender-confused individuals, but after a full week of band camp, no one wanted to put on their best performance face and pretend that they were actually enjoying slogging down one of the longer parade routes in their repertoire.

Marching band was exhausting business.

He finished off breakfast before the newscasters could start blathering in-depth about the Texas wildfires caused by some courting Monstrous Nightmares and gathered his things together; double-checking to make sure his lunch and water was put away in the cooler, and that his bag was packed with all the essentials. Everything else he had left up at the school.

"Dad, I'm going." Hiccup called, feeling triumphant that he was out the door at a quarter to seven.

"Wait!" Stoic hurried into the kitchen with a vicious-looking dagger in one hand. "Have you got everything?"

"Yeah, Dad. I've got everything." he called and stepped out the door into the fresh morning air.

The Haddocks lived almost in the middle of nowhere, a few long straight county roads away from the town. The nearest neighbor was three-quarters of a mile down the road and the surrounding area was mostly cornfields.

They occupied a small squat house that the real estate market listed as a "starter home". One and a half floors, one and a half-bath, and painted a shade of cremello that wasn't found in nature. The front door was forever stuck, the garage was unattached and the entire place was enclosed by old-growth trees and weeds. There was supposed to be a fence denoting the property line, but no one had found it yet.

The sunlight had a newly minted look to it and the air smelled fresh. It was been a while since Hiccup had been awake this early and he just wanted to enjoy it for a moment. But the moment never took off because of his dad trailing after him and swinging the knife like he was about to throw it.

"Do you need money for ice?"

Hiccup felt his pocket for the bills he had stuffed in there last night. "No, I'm good."

"What about gas?"

"No, I filled up the tank last night."

"Did you make your lunch?"

"Last night."

"Have you got sunscreen?"

"Dad!" Hiccup snapped out impatiently. Something was sure driving his father's mother-hen instincts up the wall this morning. "Yes, I've got everything! I've got my lunch. I've got money for dinner. Sunscreen's in my bag. I have a change of clothes. Marie's bringing a gigantic tub of chalk and I promise I won't crash my car."

"Well then, drive careful." Stoic said, a nervous glint in his eye. He had never truly liked the idea of his only son behind the wheel of a car. There was a strange wheezing noise - almost like laughter - and the large man whirled around, his expression twisting into an intense dislike. "And get off me roof ya black devil!"

Hiccup didn't have to look up to see what his father was yelling at, but he did anyways because it never felt right if he didn't look. Up on the roof was the dragon. It was back.

Not that it had ever really gone away in the first place.

The dragon was none other than the rare and elusive Night Fury, a dragon species that was most certainly not native to the American Midwest. It was said that Night Furies were more commonly found in the mountainous regions of the Alps and the Himalayas. Dragonologists knew next to nothing about the species, as they were so difficult to find and were presumed solitary by nature.

The Night Fury was a dragon right out of the myth.

And one liked to nap on the Haddocks' roof.

Hiccup was accustomed to the Night Fury's presence, though he was still a little weirded out by the fact it followed him around whenever he left the house. He didn't approach (he wasn't _that_ dumb), but it had been around for so long it was like an old friend.

Stoic just yelled curses at it every time he laid eyes on it.

It was what amounted to affection between the dragon and the dragon Hunter.

Smiling crookedly, Hiccup stowed his cooler and backpack in the passenger's seat of his car. It seemed today had gotten off to a good start.

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-0-


	2. Starting Off on the Left Foot

**A/N:** A lot of new material was put into this chapter to accommodate the expanded headcanon and flesh out an environment the kids are going to be spending a lot of time in. So this chapter got incredibly long. Because I imposed a word limit, the old chapter two got chopped in half. The rest of it was turned into chapter three.

The new chapter title might as well be a band in-joke. Anyone know why?

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

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**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Two: Starting Off on the Left Foot

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Stoic had tried very hard to convince his son that marching band _wasn't manly_.

It was a mind-set he was stuck in. He had been raised in a very masculine environment where the virtues of contact sports (like football) had been expounded upon with near religious fervor. Stoic had been raised to believe that contact sports like football were what turned a boy into a strapping young man.

It had worked well for him. Stoic had been a football star in his high school days and an equally formidable wrestler in the off-season. His wall of muscles and his unshakeable cool head no matter the situation had earned him the nickname "Stoic the Vast". He had left a crater of an impression on the school, one that the athletic department was sure that no one would be able to fill.

As a result of his upbringing, Stoic had formed only two opinions about marching band: Band was for the kids who couldn't do actual sports. And... Band was nothing more than background noise during half-time.

Anyways, there was nothing manly about playing a musical instrument and flouncing across a football field in clothes that were a little form-fitting. Hiccup had pointed out that that was _exactly_ what football players did, only there were no musical instruments and more body contact involved, so technically, didn't that make football a little less manly than marching band?

Stoic had tried - oh, he had tried to interest his son in various sports instead. Hiccup had broken an arm trying to catch a pass. The consensus was that he had tripped over his heels, but football had been counted out as a potential (much to Stoic's dismay). Soccer balls, baseballs and basketballs invariably headed towards his face. Swimming was a no-go since Hiccup was a sinker rather than a swimmer. Running had brought more tripping over his own feet. Anything that required excessive amounts of hand-eye coordination was simply out of question; he had been a singularly clumsy child. By the time Stoic had introduced hockey, Hiccup had flat refused to even put on the skates.

Hiccup had grown out of his clumsiness by middle school, just in time for marching band to really catch his eye. He had never been very interested in organized sports in the first place and marching band was a physical activity that wasn't a sport. It was low-impact and high endurance. He occasionally had to dodge the colorguard and mind his footing in poor weather conditions, but otherwise, he ran very little risk of injury.

Hiccup had spent much of his first season getting stared at disapprovingly and listening to comments about how he should take up a "real man's sport". The father/son relationship - which had been on shaky ground since that trip to Canada - had hit rock bottom and started to dig. Hiccup had resigned himself to an even greater distance between himself and his father; knowing that he was only at the football games for the football.

But Stoic had still come to every competition and it had slowly occurred to Hiccup that if his father was coming only for the reasons he claimed to be there for, then Stoic would not be roaring in approval with every trophy the band claimed.

In his freshman year, Hiccup had worn his father down enough to convince him to come and observe an evening of practice; even just half an hour of it. On the night that Stoic had chosen to show up early, Gobber had put the band through its paces and had made them run the show as many times as they could squeeze into the third hour. When Hiccup had staggered off the field at the end of that night, Stoic had clapped him on the shoulder and said that he had to give the band credit for being out in the twenty-degree weather with little flakes of ice spiraling down and had admitted that he wouldn't be out on a night like this without wearing thermal everything.

They still weren't quite seeing eye to eye - there were certainly days when Stoic wondered why his son couldn't have taken up an extra-curricular activity with a more manly reputation - but they were communicating again and that was the most important part. Stoic knew he couldn't very well stop his son from participating in something he loved to do without looking like an asshole, so the very least Stoic could do was make sure that his son _did it right_.

At times, Hiccup was sure his father was now an unrepentant band dad.

The school parking lot was practically empty when Hiccup arrived, save for about a dozen cars. The drum majors had to arrive early anyways and some of the other seniors would probably take the initiative to show up early. Hiccup wasn't the first senior to arrive early, at any rate. Climbing out of a turtle-green truck a few spots away was his fellow senior and clarinetist, Marie.

Marie was eccentric - because Hiccup's imagination lacked the capacity to come up with an appropriate adjective that adequately described her from top to bottom. Physically, she was blonde-haired, blue-eyed and compactly built, and if you could _just ignore_ the oddities that followed her around like light-struck moths, then she was perfectly normal.

Mentally, she seemed to be little more than a collection of non-sequiturs, mad ideas, random trivia and bits of fluff. Hiccup knew there was something under the surface that possessed some substance. Trawling through Marie's mind was like looking for shells on a desolate beach. It could take most of the afternoon, but eventually you were going to find _something_.

That made her about as sane as most band people.

"Hey Marie!" Hiccup called. He raised his free hand in greeting when the other clarinet turned around.

"G'morning Hiccup!" Marie returned, waving. "Did you sleep last night? You look awful."

"Not really. I think I got three hours." Hiccup admitted. The initial morning rush was wearing off and now he was feeling every hour he hadn't slept. "Dad woke me up at six."

"I've been up since five." Marie said with a casual shrug, but her tone of voice gave the impression that she was claiming to be more hardcore because she had been up for the past two hours as opposed to one.

She dragged her backpack out of the passengers' seat with one hand, shut the door, and lugged the pack over her shoulders. It was an impressive feat, really, as it must have weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty pounds. The backpack looked like the kind that was normally used by European backpackers who were in it for the long haul. Hiccup knew from experience that Marie carried everything short of a small house in that backpack. If you needed _anything_ - even the things that really shouldn't be able to fit into a backpack - Marie would have it and she would have it in different colors to boot.

"So, looking forward to this week?" she asked brightly, moving to grab her coolers out of the truck bed.

Hiccup shrugged. "Mostly. I mean, there are probably bits of it I'm not looking forward to. Do you think our rookies will survive?"

Marie thought for a moment as they started slowly across the parking lot to the school's main entrance. "I dunno. We got a metric crap-ton of rookies this year."

"We only have six." Hiccup pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's six more than we had last year." Marie reminded him pointedly. "And the year before that. **And** the year before that-"

"Okay, I get it. I know, we're used to a much smaller section." Hiccup said, conceding the point. At eight members, the clarinet section was at the largest it had been since their freshman year. Heck, the band was the largest it had been since their rookie year. They had lost fifteen seniors to graduation this year, but had gained a whopping thirty-two rookies in the process, bringing the number of band members to a hearty eighty-six.

"A much smaller section?" Marie repeated, snorting. "Hiccup, for three years, it was just us two and we're buddies. We get along. This is your only year as a _real_ section leader with all the leadership challenges that come with the position."

"Okay, so humor me. We're seniors, this is our last season. We've spent the summer trying to get our rookies into shape. Now which one of them do you think will be ready to step up next year?"

"Hmm, okay, uh... I'm going to go with Ashley B. and Kate. They were probably the most focused." Marie said thoughtfully. "McCracken, Kristen and what's-her-face-"  
"Amanda." Hiccup interjected.

"Amanda- And you were worried about not being able to remember all their names." Marie said, slightly teasing. "They were good to start, but they've gotten better and that's what we want. But in terms of who's going to step up as section leader, I'd give the nomination to Kate."

Then she shook her head despairingly. "I've got nothing on Ashley- Excuse me, that's 'Ash**lyn**'. If she'd actually shown up at the June sectionals _like she was supposed to_, I'd have a better opinion of her."

"Yeah, I'm supposed to talk to you about the problem you have with her." Hiccup said with a sigh.

"I don't actually have a problem with her. She's the one who hates me." Marie pointed out lightly. "I know being a rookie means you're more prone to making silly mistakes and it's easy enough to forgive them, especially since we're still early in the season, but she does not listen! I try to correct her and all she does is roll her eyes. Have you see her posture? It's atrocious! My parents would have slapped me silly if I'd walked around like that! _Please_ Hiccup, may I slap her?"

"No, you may not. No violence against the rookies, even if they are being totally stupid." Hiccup said firmly, ignoring the way Marie's face fell. "Look, unlike you, most of us didn't grow up with active-duty military parents who taught us how to walk so straight you could balance a tennis ball on the top of your head. If it gets worse, I'll bring it up with Gobber. I'll try talking to her in the meantime."

"Oh, that won't help."

"Then we'll have a business meeting during lunch or dinner today."

"Not at dinner. Steiny's roped me into helping her with the rookie dinner today."

"That's tonight? I thought we didn't do that until Wednesday."

"Steiny's progressive. She pushed it up."

They reached the front entrance. Hiccup reached for the door first, but Marie bumped his leg with one of her coolers and asked: "Wait, are we allowed to go in this way? Or do we have to go around the back way?"

"I heard they were going to be finished with the remodel before school started." Hiccup answered, shrugging.

"Yeah, but there's still a week and a half left before school starts. They could drag it out right up to the wire." Marie said in semi-dire tones.

"There's no signs on the door anymore." Hiccup pointed out, gesturing to the pristinely clean glass. For months, the glass had been covered in warning stickers informing people that this was a construction zone and that they should not enter. The stickers had helpfully offered information of where alternate entrances could be found.

The school district had experienced a rise in student intake over the last couple of years. It had been gradual, like a slug moving across a square of sidewalk. It had been a slow-moving increase that the administration didn't really notice it until four dozen freshmen were assigned lockers that didn't exist. Of course, the problem had been bigger than forty eight lockers that didn't exist. Too many teachers were doubled up in classrooms or teaching in venues that weren't actually classrooms and therefore weren't ideal for teaching. The building in its then-incarnation had become too small for the growing community.

Construction had been ongoing for the past eighteen months. The school had grown a second floor and new classrooms and everything else had undergone a rather extensive renovation to bring the facilities into the twenty-first century.

Hiccup leaned up next to the door, cupping a hand on the glass to block out the reflection of the landscape behind him so he could look inside.

"All the temporary walls are gone." he announced. "I think we're good to go."

Without further hesitation, he pulled open the door. The breeze of air that rushed out, for once, did not smell like sawdust and plaster. And it was silent; no buzzing power tools or construction foremen shouting instructions.

It was almost eerie; the lack of what they had become so used to.

Bracing themselves for the changes, the clarinetists walked into the school and around the first corner. They glimpsed the corner of the cafeteria, but the main part of the student commons wasn't visible until they cleared the closed concessions stand.

And promptly came to an immediate, dumbstruck halt.

"Uhh... are we in the right school?" Hiccup wondered, his eyes wandering up the unfamiliar architecture as he attempted to find something familiar enough to tell him that they were indeed in the right school.

"This has warranted some clichéd language." Marie decided, her gaze drawn upwards to the newest additions to the architecture. "So... holy renovations, Batman."

"I knew they were building a second floor on top of this, but this is..." Hiccup trailed off. The changes were so extreme he already couldn't picture the student commons in its old incarnation.

"This school looks good in the twenty-first century." Marie commented.

The section leader had to nod in agreement to that.

The original student commons had been an example of poor planning and everyone postulated that the budget that hadn't been well-thought out. The lighting had been badly placed, the ceiling had been far too low (eight feet) and the furnishings had been sparse. Students had called it "The Cave", since it had been about as well-lit and comfortable as one.

The renovation of the student commons had been long overdue and the budget for it had been _ve-e-ery_ generous. Though it meant shutting down a major artery of the school for three months of the school year, the administration had decided that the end result would far outweigh the congestion and traffic problems. The construction workers had set up temporary walls so they could work without disturbing the students too much. And to keep the students from nosing around too much.

Post-remodel, the student commons had been given an unrecognizable face-lift.

Gone were the eight-foot ceilings and badly-placed lights. The area had been drastically opened up with large skylights soaring a good thirty feet over the floor. Half-moon sofa sets had been placed around the main square, finally providing the students a comfortable place to mingle. But they had really utilized the new space by building a second floor that perched fifteen feet above the ground floor. A large piece had been cut out above the main square, allowing a great deal of natural light to illuminate the sofa sets. A floating staircase spiraled up like a weed in the corner where the restroom wall met the backstage wall.

And speaking of the cafeteria, the open room had been re-painted and re-tiled. The chairs and tables had been replaced with something a little more hard-wearing. The face-lift wasn't as extreme, but the facilities had obviously been brought forward into the new decade.

"Why couldn't they had done this five years ago?" Hiccup wondered. He felt slightly insulted that the administration had waited until the school had run out of room.

"You're asking the wrong person." Marie informed him, though she knew very well the question was rhetorical.

"Think the clocks are running on time now?"

"Doubt it."

The outline of the commons hadn't changed one iota. From where they were standing, the game gym remained behind them with the athletic offices and the changing lockers separating it from the P.E. gym. The auditorium and the concessions stand were on their right, and the cafeteria was directly to the left. The music suite was situated around the corner from the restrooms, right next to the auditorium. The only real new structural additions was the flight of stairs.

"Those," Hiccup pointed to half-moon sofa sets as they passed one. "Are probably going to be a bad idea."

"I foresee lots of steam cleaning and decontamination, followed by the administration citing a lack of proper appreciation for the fact they gave us couches and subsequently taking them away." Marie predicted.

Hiccup blinked until the meaning sank in. "It's seven in the morning." he said.

Marie shrugged. "I'm not the only person who's going to make comments to that effect."

They hung to the right and went past the restrooms and through the orange doors located there. What they entered was technically the backstage area of the auditorium (a room where performers hung out before their turn on stage), but it was connected to the band suite. This part of the school hadn't really been touched during the remodel, not with the band present during the latter half of the summer and the school had allowed a community play production to take place in the auditorium. The floors had been re-carpeted and the paint job had been tidied up, as far as Hiccup could tell. Everything had been given a good polish, even the new case for the band's State Finals trophies. (Of which there were just six from the last two decades, so the more numerous Division One Regionals trophies had been installed in the case just to make things look a little more robust.)

"Are we the first ones here?" Hiccup wondered, listening to the near silence.

"Gobber has to be here or the doors wouldn't be open." Marie pointed out.

"Probably has the drum majors upstairs in a meeting. Lecturing the poor bastards." Hiccup said while his section-mate nodded in agreement. He frowned. "Wait, who are our drum majors again? I know Steiny is; she's the conducting drum major."

"Ah, with the effort you put in to remember our rookies' names, you've forgotten who the other drum majors are." Marie concluded, leaning into the door that led into the instrument storage area and held it open for her section leader.

"Could you just tell me?"

"Beth and Josh."

"Asian Josh?"

"How many Asian Joshes are in this band?"

"Well, there is Asian Ganon."

"Yeah, but his name is _Ganon_."

Having asserted the difference between the two adopted Korean members of the band, Marie surged forward to claim a prime spot on the bench opposite the clarinet instrument locker. She had shoved her coolers underneath the bench and was divesting herself of her bulky backpack by the time Hiccup set his things down. While his section-mate changed into a pair of much more appropriate shoes, Hiccup opened the doors of the clarinet lockers to make sure they were still clean.

Somehow, in three years, between the two of them, they had cluttered up almost every single instrument locker in the section with water bottles, pep band music, concert music, and charts ranging from three to four years old. Chalk from seasons past had decayed into dust, spare phone number lists and theme shirt order forms had formed the bulk of the detritus while crumpled order forms of band booster fundraisers had been added in the off-season. Marie had finally snapped on Rookie Saturday and had half-bullied Hiccup into helping her de-clutter and re-organize the space. A good move, they had realized not even one minute after finishing, when Gobber had come to ask them why they were neglecting their rookies.

Marie pulled the last knot tight and jumped back to her feet, wiggling against the gel inserts until they conformed more fully to the shape of her arches.

"C'mon, let's go check out the upstairs."

Since they still had more than ninety minutes to kill and nothing better to do, Hiccup followed his section-mate out of the band suite and into the backstage area where the stairs were located.

The second floor of the band suite contained Gobber's office (they could hear his loud voice through the closed door, issuing instructions to the drum majors), a plethora of practice rooms, and a secondary concert room that housed filing cabinets upon filing cabinets of music. Though the band had been to State Finals for only six years in the last twenty-two, they were a pretty trophy-riffic marching band and had amassed quite a collection over the last two decades. These trophies gathered dust on the rows of filing cabinets, but every so often, someone ran a curious finger across the plaques and the bases and the pointy bits, so touches of platinum and steel winked in the overhead lights.

There had always been a hallway leading down to the choir teacher's office, but for some reason, it cornered unnecessarily to the left and continued along until it hit a brick wall. It was often taken as a hint that maybe once upon a time, the original construction plans had included a second floor to the student commons. The students generally agreed that the budget had run out and the constructors had bricked up what would have been a doorway.

There was now a doorway at the end of that hall, a big orange door to match the ones downstairs.

Hiccup and Marie shared a curious look. Hiccup inclined his head in a 'ladies first' gesture, so the blonde eagerly pushed the door open and stepped through.

The new second floor of the refurbished student commons really wasn't anything special to look at, but it was- well, _new_. It still had that proverbial new car smell. The construction hadn't quite settled, the carpet and tiles hadn't absorbed the crap from a thousand dirty shoes, and the paint wasn't faded or stained by the presence of six hundred-plus students leaning on the walls. It was fresh, new. It occurred to Hiccup that they were probably the first students to actually see the new addition.

Marie zipped around like a humming bird, rushing by Hiccup so fast that her passage left his hair ruffled. Every so often, her voice rang out from one of the new corners, exclaiming excitedly over whatever was there.

"There's seating up here for the cafeteria! Seniors only!"

"They're spoiling us, these bastards! How often d'ya think they'll keep this vending machine stocked?"

"Hey! Brand-new lockers over here! I see at least two blocks! I think they're opening up new classrooms too! And more stairs!"

"Urg! Whose bright idea was it to Lysol the bathroom half to death?"

She finally skidded to a halt in front of a stretch of wall between two doors accessing the upper balcony seating of the game gym, and admired the handiwork that had been painted there.

"And here is the obligatory butt-ugly rendering of our mascot. Hey Hiccup, d'ya think Vikings actually wore those horned helmets?"

Hiccup wandered a little closer to where Marie was standing and looked up at the rendering of the Touchstone High School mascot with the eye of an artist. The actual painting wasn't bad; it was professional work. The actual content was every possible Viking cliché put together to make a picture that shouldn't have been put up in public, much less something that was supposed to inspire school spirit.

"Well, I don't think Vikings were all that pretty." he finally said.

"Doesn't mean they had to make it sweaty, grubby-lookin' guy. Vikings were actually fairly hygienic. Baths once a week." Marie said knowledgeably. "The axe looks accurate."

"Yeah."

"Still," the clarinetist went on, obviously out to press the point as they walked away from the painting. "They could have made it a badass Viking woman instead." She grinned at Hiccup. "Like your girlfriend."

Hiccup could not hold back the long-suffering sigh. _Can't get through a conversation without this coming up. What is with my friends?_ He wondered. "For the last time, Astrid is not my girlfriend."

"_Yet_." Marie stressed, smirking. "Not _yet_, you mean."

"She's not my girlfriend!" Hiccup repeated emphatically for the umpteenth time. Really, she wasn't. They just hung out a lot. They got together and were social. Because that was what friends did. And just because they got together without the group didn't meant they were going on dates. "I mean, I like her, but it's not like I - _like_ her."

"You keep saying it, but I'm just not believing it." Marie said, moving to lean on the railing balcony over the main square. "Like, half the band has seen you two making big moony eyes at each other when you think no one's looking. Seriously, would it kill you to admit there's a mutual attraction there? I got twenty-three bucks riding on the outcome."

Hiccup scowled. It actually didn't surprise him that there was a bet going on, or that his section-mate had instigated it. "How long have you been betting on us?" he asked.

"Since the first occurrence of the big moony eyes." Marie replied, not even wincing under the glare he sent her. "C'mon Hiccup, I'm up against the saxophones here! You know what they're like! Asian Josh and Topher say you two won't get together until Christmas. Shelby, Jared and Taco say spring concert. And Slim says it won't happen until graduation. Katie's not betting anything, but she thinks spring break and Robert doesn't know you exist yet, I don't think. Meanwhile, **I** say you'll be hooked up by the end of the season. I have that much confidence in this! So prove I'm right and freaking kiss her already!"

"You are so not making me kiss Astrid."

"I'll up the bidding and chip you in ten bucks if you do it by State week."

"I'd kiss her for free."

"You'd kiss who for free?" asked the one voice Hiccup had been hoping not to hear in the middle of this sort of conversation.

* * *

-0-


	3. The Importance of Chalk

**A/N:** Here's the other half of the old chpt2, now legitimately a chapter all on its own.

Now, before I completely forget (again), there's a fanart link in my profile. A wonderful individual drew me lovely art of Marie. Have a look at it, please!

Also... Fuck you, Tumblr. Fuck you very much.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Three: The Importance of Chalk

* * *

Hiccup stared briefly death in the eyes.

More accurately, he stared into the eyes of Astrid Hofferson (his long-time crush and equally long-time best friend). It was like staring death in the eyes because the colorguard captain personified the expression: "If looks could kill".

She also had killer looks.

"Astrid!" Hiccup yelped, very un-manly-like, suddenly finding a need to wipe his palms on his trouser legs. "Hey-_-_ Astrid! Hi Astrid! Hi-_-_ Astrid!" He looked away briefly. "We weren't talking about you."

Marie giggled. "And if you believe that, I know a place that buys and sells used magic carpets."

"Would you go away?" he requested.

"Aye-aye, mon capitan!" Marie saluted him and flounced off in the direction of the vending machines, coins rattling in her hand.

"So..." Astrid turned those incredibly blue eyes of hers back to him and narrowed them even further. It was even worse because her voice remained unassuming. "What were you two talking about?"

Hiccup would have back-pedaled frantically if he'd had anywhere to go. His back was to the railing and Astrid wasn't standing far enough away for him to make an easy escape. She must have arrived while they had been contemplating the painting of the school mascot and then followed the voices.

There wasn't "much" to Astrid. She had been an amateur dancer for longer than Hiccup had known her (apparently, she was now too tall to dance professionally as far as the local companies were concerned) and this regime had aggressively shaped her body to what most people would consider "slender". She wasn't big, but it was indisputable that she was still bigger than Hiccup (who was two inches shorter than her and proportioned exactly like a whippy tree sapling).

And that whole personifying "If looks could kill" thing? Yeah, that just made it seem much more likely that she would be able to snap him down the middle.

"Not you." Hiccup replied quickly. "I mean, we were sort of talking about you, but not really. Your name just sort of came up in the conversation, but we weren't talking about you-you-"

"Hiccup!" Astrid said sharply. Her tone alone was enough to put a stop to his babbling. "Stop talking. Before you confuse yourself. Now, did I or did I not hear you say that you'd kiss me for free?"

Hiccup hesitated for half a second as he contemplated various ways out of this conversation. He had been friends with Astrid since _forever_; since kindergarten, when she had declared him "Hiccup" and then punched him on the arm for hogging the black crayons (he had been "Hiccup" to everyone ever since). This made it simultaneously easy and very difficult to talk to her, knowing very well how she would react to the things he said.

"No matter what I say, you're still thinking about punching me." he concluded after the moment was up.

"Well, that depends entirely on your answer." Astrid replied cryptically, casually examining her knuckles.

"So if it doesn't matter what I say, I just won't-_-_ say anything." Hiccup decided. It seemed like the safest option. Sometimes, silence was his very best friend. (Other times, it was his worst enemy.)

"Not good enough." Astrid told him, extending her fingers to take a quick look at her nails. "I want to know why you kissing me for free is such a big deal. For that matter, who wants to pay you to kiss me?"

"Marie. Kill her instead!" Hiccup replied quickly, eager to get that laser-focused attention off of himself.

"I'm not killing anyone. Not today." Astrid said assuringly, her aggressive body language backing down into something much more approachable. "If it makes you feel better, I'd kiss **you** for free."

Hiccup felt his face flush. "R-Really?" His voice squeaked with some last remnant of puberty. Astrid smiled sweetly and Hiccup felt something in his ribcage turn to mush. He loved her smile. He had never seen another girl smile the way Astrid could. Anytime Marie or Ruffnut smiled, it gave the impression they were about to engage in sadistic and/or depraved activities, something that would probably end with his boxers around his ankles and glue in his hair (it had happened before).

"But if you ever tell anyone I said that," Astrid growled, her demeanor turning threatening. She poked a warning finger hard into the flesh of his shoulder. "You won't have any lips to kiss with."

Hiccup almost said something in reply that would have suggested that Astrid was implying herself to be either a paid prostitute or an easy lay. He _almost_ said something like that. The words were dangerously close to the tip of his tongue.

He was better at curbing his sarcastic streak these days. Like a twenty-five percent success rate, especially when faced with the prospect of not inspiring Astrid to throw him over the railing. He was going to see her pretty much every day for the next three months and the **last** thing he wanted to was piss her off badly enough to turn the next three months into a rough equivalent of hell.

"So, uh... W-What are you doing here this early?" Hiccup asked, hoping this new topic wouldn't involve who would do what for free.

Astrid shrugged and crossed her arms. "Trying to be responsible." she replied, starting back towards the band suite door and Hiccup followed. "The colorguard room got turned into a pit over the summer, so I have to clean it up a little before everyone else gets here."

"And to think you teased us about cluttering up the instrument lockers." Hiccup commented.

"Hey, a couple of water bottles and some chalk dust is **nothing** compared to that landfill you two had going on." Astrid pointed out. "How long did it take you to clean it all out?"

"We got it done before our rookies turned up." Hiccup reminded her. "And you could have said something about us _having_ rookies this year instead of making it a big secret."

"Aw, but the look on your face was great!" Astrid laughed. "It was so cute that you took all your little rookies down to the Dairy Barn for ice cream!"

Hiccup grumbled incoherently and crossed his arms. "We had to do _something_ with them. Because everyone thought it would be a great laugh to keep it a secret from both of us." he snapped in a not particularly harsh tone. As far as he had been able to tell, the entire band had known that the clarinets were getting rookies this year, except for the section itself. He still couldn't figure out why his fellow band-mates had seen fit to keep it a secret. Even Gobber hadn't told them and he had certainly known weeks in advance.

"Oh cheer up, Hiccup!" Astrid whacked him across a shoulder with the flat of her hand, hard enough to make him stagger into the block wall that lined the interior hallway of the band suite. "I know you and Marie were worried about the section crumbling and dying next year."

"I was worried that Gobber would have to recruit some saxophones into the section this year. Or forcibly draft some of the eighth graders if we didn't get any." Hiccup admitted. "I really don't mind the saxophones, but I don't think either of us would survive the weirdness."

Astrid frowned. "But Marie is weird enough to give the saxes a good run." she pointed out. She lowered her voice to a whisper and added: "Remember the gummy worms?"

"Thanks, Astrid. Now I know what my nightmares will be about tonight." Hiccup did not like thinking about the gummy worms. No one liked thinking about the gummy worms, except for Marie and Ruffnut, who did so with fond nostalgia. "Look, it's a different kind of weirdness. Two different wavelengths. Clarinet weirdness and sax weirdness just don't harmonize well."

He ended this by waving his hands around one another, as if attempting to demonstrate the magnetic un-attraction between the Brand of Weird employed by the saxophones and the Brand of Weird employed by the clarinets. Astrid watched the hand-waving, mostly understanding what the section leader was trying to tell her, if only by dint of having known him for years and because of watching band members interact with one another. While all band members were inherently weird, there was a marked difference in the collective personality of each section and naturally, personalities were known to clash.

"Anyways," Astrid started, changing the subject when they hit the stairs. "Do you know who all is here yet?"

"Other than Gobber and the drum majors, I think we're the first ones." Hiccup replied. "And only because my dad went crazy and decided I needed to be responsible and got me up way too early."

"Don't you have an alarm clock?"

"The Night Fury ate it. No, I'm not kidding. It must have annoyed him too, because one morning he just stuck his head through the window and chewed on the thing for a while."

"Doesn't your phone have an alarm feature?"

"Yeah, but the last couple of times I tried to set it, it went off at weird hours. I gave up."

Astrid shook her head in resignation.

"What? It's not like I'm doing this on purpose." Hiccup pointed out. His various misadventures with modern technology and the Night Fury tended to cause his friends to question his sanity and more so the sanity of his father for _letting_ the Night Fury stick around.

"I just can't believe you keep your windows open even though a dragon sleeps on your roof."

"My house wasn't built in a time when air conditioning came standard. It's either open my windows or marinate in my own sweat."

They reached the clarinet lockers just in time for Marie to hear the last part of the statement and she piped in: "And that's disgusting!"

"See, exactly. Thank you." Hiccup nodded, pleased with the sectional solidarity and the complete understanding of what it was like to live without air conditioning. "Anyways, it's not like the Night Fury can fit **through** my window."

"Even so..." Astrid rolled her eyes. Sane people weren't keen on having dragons hanging around just outside of the house. They were far less keen to throw open their windows and let the dragon stick its head in.

"Sanity is overrated." Marie commented, as if she had read the colorguard captain's mind. She had climbed the instrument lockers for the clarinets and was shoulder-deep in her own locker, rummaging around presumably for her charts.

"Hey while you're up there, grab my charts, will you?" Hiccup requested. His locker was right next to hers, after all.

"Get them yourself. You're not an invalid." Marie complained, finally extracting a roll of half a dozen pages stapled together and an empty water bottle caught between the pages.

"You're already up there." Hiccup pointed out.

Marie promptly jumped off. "Now I'm not." She chucked the empty water bottle into the back of the locker. "Y'know, it's starting to look like we didn't clean at all. Astrid, sleep well?"

Like the phrase was magic, Astrid smothered a yawn. "First day of band camp, who does? Just hope all my rookies get here on time with chalk and water and everything." she said. Rookie members made up the majority of her section this year and she was mostly convinced that they were going to forget the important things.

"Hey Marie, you brought chalk right?" Hiccup asked, while Astrid dug into her bag for her sunscreen (despite being colorguard and having a room of their own, Astrid liked to invade the clarinets' section).

"Oh Hiccup, you should know me by now." Marie reached into the bottom of her bag and unearthed a large tub of chalk that had to weigh at least ten pounds.

Hiccup did a double-take. He was used to his section-mate pulling items out of her backpack that shouldn't necessarily fit, but it always worth a second look or three whenever the larger items came out.

"How the hell did you fit that in there on top of everything else?" Astrid asked incredulously, her eyes wide.

"Like I said, you should know me by now. I'm good at this." Marie replied. She set down the tub with a thud that shook the bench and pried up the lid. "This thing has just about every color of the rainbow and some I think the rainbow rejected on the account of being too obnoxious. Toxic biohazard colors, neon, pastels, these hurt my eyes to look at them too long..." She held up a stick colored an unusual shade of pale green. "And I think this one glows in the dark."

"Dude!"

A blonde blur that was roughly human-shaped slammed into Marie at a dangerous speed. When it settled, it had wrapped lanky arms around the clarinetist and was identified as Ruffnut Thorston.

"If that chalk really does glow in the dark, I want it." she said, twitchy fingers already reaching for the chalk stick. "Because I am your best friend and you love me."

"No way!" Another blonde blur with the same proportions as Ruffnut darted in and swiped the chalk out of Marie's hand like a dive-bombing bird of prey. Tuffnut held it up proudly. "She's gonna give it to me 'cause I'm her best friend!"

"No she's not! That's my chalk!" Ruffnut shouted and leapt on her brother (the relation would be denied until the world exploded).

"Ow, let go!"

The Thorston twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut (they did have real names, but no amount of poking around had ever led Hiccup to finding out what those names were), were the sort of siblings who expressed affection for each other by concussing the other. From the outside, they seemed to hate each other to a violent extreme and sometimes the group had to assure complete strangers that no, it really wasn't what it looked like. They fought over everything for the sake of fighting over everything.

The twins looked quite silly grappling over something that was barely five inches long and would be used up before the end of the month, but none of the assembled were going to tell them _that_.

"Get your own, asshole!"

"Take that one; it's pink. Girls like pink."

A self-proclaimed tomboy to the bitter end, Ruffnut did not take kindly to someone suggesting she should be visibly girly by owning things that were pink and/or frilly. She yanked the coveted piece of chalk free and smashed her brother savagely over the head with her fist.

"Oops! Now this one has _blood_ on it."

Both of the twins must have been born with the thickest skulls on the planet because Tuffnut didn't even looked remotely dazed from the blow, but Astrid stepped in anyways and snagged the chalk out of Ruffnut's hand.

"Hey! Astrid! That's mine!" the female twin protested, lunging after the chalk that was rapidly disappearing behind Astrid's back.

"If you two are going to fight over it, neither of you gets the chalk!" the colorguard captain said firmly, passing it to Hiccup while easily holding Ruffnut off. "Technically, it belongs to Marie. She should get to decide who uses it."

"I'm not touching it if it's got Tuffnut's blood on it." Marie muttered, her expression faintly disgusted.

"But it glows in the dark!" Tuffnut pointed out, shoving his twin out of the way. "Gimme the chalk, Astrid."

"Astrid, I'm your friend! Give **me** the chalk!" Ruffnut wheedled, kicking her brother in the shins. "We have to stand united against the stupidity of boys!"

"I'm not stupid, you're stupid!"

"You take the pink one!"

"I'm not a girl!"

"Your hair's long enough!"

And then they were off again, grappling and growling over another stupid thing, like usual. It was just the way it happened to be. The twins couldn't go two minutes without finding something to fight about: who did better on the last test, whose butt was encroaching on the other's seat or who could eat more of a hamburger in one bite. It was the way they bonded and frankly, Hiccup would get worried that, if one day, the twins failed to get snippy at each other over the little things. And since the twins were pretty much incapable of brutally injuring each other (bumps, bruises and scrapes were ignored so long as they didn't interfere with marching and playing abilities), Gobber let them go about their business.

Someone cleared their throat in a decidedly disapproving manner and the twins froze like icy water had been thrown on them. The assembled band geeks looked to find a lone trumpet rookie busy staring at his joint section leaders caught in the act of attempting to strangle each other.

"It's -_-_ just a piece of chalk, you guys." he said, his eyes darting around, uncertain in the faces with half a dozen seniors.

"_Just_ a piece of chalk? Did you say this was _just_ a piece of chalk?" Hiccup asked, an eyebrow arched sharply. He was feeling a little dramatic today. "It's hardly a piece of chalk. Don't you know what chalk does to you?"

The trumpet rookie shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving the senior. His expression suggested two things; one that he thought the older teen was completely mental and two, if he came any closer, the rookie was going to run for the hills. But Hiccup sidled into arm's length without the rookie bolting for it and waved the chalk stick under the kid's nose.

"This week, you're going to learn something very important. Chalk isn't normal." he intoned, putting arm around the kid's shoulders when the rookie made a motion like he was going to run. "You wouldn't think-_-_ See, you just have to use it. Just once. And then it's got you in its clutches. But you don't realize it and you go on using it to mark your charts like everything's all fine and dandy. Until one day... You lose it. Or use it up. And then you freak out, because it's only when you lose the chalk that you finally realize that there's more chalk dust in your veins than there is blood. You don't control the chalk anymore. The chalk controls you!"

Hiccup thrust the stick into the air with a melodramatic flair.

"And this is glow-in-the-dark chalk. This is a god among chalk pieces. All hail the mighty glow-in-the-dark chalk!"

His friends obliged him fantastically and flattened themselves to the floor, proclaiming that they were not worthy to be in the presence of the lordly chalk stick. Despite looking quite freaked out, the rookie was otherwise unimpressed.

"You guys are -_-_ kind of weird." he said. He said it politely because he was trying not to offend, but it was clear he thought they had lost their minds. He pushed Hiccup's arm off and walked off to find someone who still had their sanity.

"You're the only rookie here right now!" Marie called after him warningly. She looked at twins as they all stood back up. "What's wrong with that kid? We had our rookies warped by the end of June and that's coming from the section that went without rookies for three years."

"Whaddya think we've been _trying_ to do?" Ruffnut said in an aggrieved tone. She rolled her eyes. "I mean, the others are coming along fine, but with him, it's like trying to get a brick wall to make a face."

"Yeah, I never thought it would be so hard to get someone to crack a smile." Tuffnut agreed, scowling in the direction the rookie had left. "Marching band is serious business, but you can only take it so seriously. And seriously, who gets the chalk?"

No way was his sister getting that awesome piece of chalk.

"If we're worshipping it now, no one gets to use it." Marie decided.

"Ah Berk County, the only place in North America that still holds the Norse pantheon in some reverence." Hiccup commented, trying hard to smother a laugh. "'Course, it's only _some_ reverence if we're dumping them for something that falls apart in the rain."

"What are we doing this time? Did Astrid have another bad idea?" asked a voice that was more welcome than the too-serious trumpet rookie, but only marginally more so. Strolling towards them like he had just been declared king of everything was Snotlout Jorgenson. He was Hiccup's cousin on his mother's side, but the resemblance was hardly obvious as both cousins took after their respective fathers.

"No bad ideas this time, we're just thinking about building a shrine to a stick of glow-in-the-dark chalk." Hiccup informed him casually. Snotlout made a confused face and moved in for a better look.

"That thing looks like a penis." he stated.

"He blasphemes the Chalk!" Marie whispered while the twins hissed and made warding gestures.

Astrid crossed her arms and frowned. "And why do you think it looks like penis?"

"Duh! Because I got one." Snotlout said, waving a hand in the general vicinity of his crotch.

One of Tuffnut's blond eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "You go around staring at your own dick?"

"Dude, that's too much information." Ruffnut groaned in disgust. She put a hand over her lips. "I think I just threw up in my mouth a little."

"Wow Snotlout, there are things about you I could have happily died not knowing about." Marie said, disgusted. She waved a hand like she could physically banish the words.

"What? That's just what I noticed!" Snotlout said defensively. "It looks like a penis!"

"I think Freud would have something to say about that." Astrid muttered.

Hiccup raised a hand. "I don't like thinking about why you're so keen to compare your dick to everything, but if we're on that track... Does that mean yours is short and thin too?"

The twins cackled most immaturely

"Does it glow in the dark?" Ruffnut asked, grinning evilly.

"Does constant use wear it down?" Tuffnut asked, sharing the evil grin.

They exchanged celebratory high-fives.

"Marie, give me something to throw at them." Snotlout demanded, holding out a hand. His cheeks had turned a ruddy red color.

Marie checked her bag's contents. "Would you like the squishy pillow or my spare socks?"

"Give me something hard!"

"Snotlout, I don't have the equipment for that."

The twins broke into another round of hysterical cackling. Astrid raised her hand to her mouth to mostly hide the fact she was smiling. Hiccup wasn't quite so polite and grinned shamelessly. Snotlout had left himself wide open for that one. It was hugely satisfying watching his cousin get knocked down a peg or two; especially since Snotlout had liked to knock him into mud puddles when they were younger. It was karma coming back around to bite him in the ass. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

"Alright, c'mon guys. That's enough." Nonetheless, Hiccup was the first to step forward. Snotlout was fairly red in the face by this point and he wasn't known for being a gentleman. While Marie could duck and dodge with the best of them and her fighting style of clinging to her opponent like a monkey until they fell over was generally successful, Hiccup didn't want his section-mate (or his cousin, really) to get hurt. He'd rather that neither of them be out of commission at any point during the season; particularly not on the first day of band camp.

"We're seniors this year. We're supposed to set a good example for our rookies. I'm sure that's why we're all here ridiculously early." he went on. He put on a sardonic tone. "That means no maiming each other, farting in cramped places, or hazing the rookies by making them climb onto the school roof."

"Wait, I thought we were supposed to do that." Tuffnut said. He looked confused. He remembered his rookie year with great clarity and he was certain all of that had happened anyways.

"I'm being sarcastic." Hiccup said, frowning slightly. "Except for the part about setting good examples. We're definitely supposed to do that." He turned to the twins. "Ruff, Tuff, you both need to be alive at the end of the season, preferably in one piece each. Marie, no horror stories. And don't-_-_ make more horror story fodder. Let's have at least one season where no one runs away from you screaming and traumatized. Most of the rookies think we're all scary enough as it is."

Marie held up a hand and shook her head. "No promises, o mighty section leader."

"Snotlout, Gobber wanted me to tell you that if you keep chucking your drumsticks at the trumpets, Beth has permission to duct tape them to your hands." Hiccup informed his cousin.

"What? She can't do that!" Snotlout protested. He was just throwing them at the twins because they kept flipping him off. His aim just happened to be a little bad, that was all.

"Actually, she can. Section leader, drum major, so... Yeah." Hiccup shrugged. He looked around briefly -_-_ it looked like Fishlegs was going to be slightly less responsible and would show up at a more reasonable hour. "Astrid... You've done great so far. Keep up the good work."

Astrid smiled, perhaps a little smugly.

"Yeah, yeah, suck up to her." Tuffnut said sneeringly.

"Quiet fool!" Marie slapped a hand over his mouth, using her other hand to grab his shoulders and shake him. "He might make progress!"

* * *

-0-


	4. Stoking the Fire

**A/N:** Cue groveling, sniveling apologies. I intended to have this chapter up two months ago, but foreign plot bunnies began eating my brain and my family life suddenly went pear-shaped. Things have lulled, so now you get another revamped chapter.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Four: Stoking the Fire

* * *

The rest of the band trickled in the time leading up to nine o'clock. During that time, it occurred to Hiccup that he probably should have added: "Don't corrupt the rookies irretrievably" to the list of things Marie wasn't supposed to do. Sanity might have been overrated, but they were still going to need it when the season ended.

The difficulty was that Marie thought in overlapping stellated icosahedra, none of which were uniform. Down the straight lines, it seemed that her thought processes made perfect sense, but she had a nasty habit of taking abrupt turns and losing in the process everyone who was trying to follow her. After six years of school, four years of band and three seasons as the only two clarinets together, Hiccup knew that his section-mate didn't think quite like other people.

But she didn't need apprentices.

However, no one had told the rookies that.

"God... She just came up behind me... Like a shadow with plus-ten stealth..." Fishlegs was relating his morning scare to Hiccup. "I didn't even hear her. And then she jumped me..."

"Fishlegs, remember. Dark practice room. Funny noises. Closed door. Don't open it." Hiccup reminded him. "That goes in any circumstance, especially when you don't know who's actually in there-_-_ Wait, was it Marie?"

"No!" Fishlegs shook his head. "It was one of the others! She's got minions now! Like the evil overlord with a ninety percent chance of striking a critical hit!"

"Yeah, I know about the minions." Hiccup assured him. One of those minions was from his own section. It was hard not to miss Marie conspiring with Kristen; all whispers and covert evil glances. It was kind of creepy.

Unfortunately for Fishlegs, the other minion was a flute rookie and with Steiny being the conducting drum major, that put Fishlegs in the spot of first chair and section leader for the flutes.

"C'mon, it's almost nine." Hiccup clapped a hand on Fishleg's shoulder briefly and started towards the band room. Fishlegs glanced over his shoulder warily for any sign of the Dark OverLord and her minions. He was going to be a little jumpy for the rest of the day.

The "Dark OverLord and her minions" were in the band room with everyone else, save for a few stragglers. The room already smelled rather strongly of sunscreen and bug spray. No one was quite in their own section; the percussion mingling with the brass and the colorguard mostly scattered amongst the rest of the band. Hiccup couldn't help a small smile. He didn't care what anyone else thought; as far as he was concerned, band season officially began on the first day of band camp.

He stepped around several colorguard girls to get to his seat on the second riser and looked over his section. Marie was leaning forward and talking animatedly to her flute minion, Lauren H. (there was also a Lauren B.) while her clarinet minion had scooted out of her chair to listen in.

Kate and Ashley looked to be having a very serious discussion about something, their voices low and their heads together. Kate was a freshman and probably felt like she had to take a larger degree of responsibility as the technically up-and-coming section leader.

Further down were Amanda and Brittany (who was likely to be known almost solely by her last name, given that the band already held two other Brittanys), who were busy exchanging good-natured barbs with one of the trumpet rookies.

In last chair was Ashlyn, whose face was pinched in a sullen, slightly rebellious expression and she was twisting her charts around a stick of chalk in a nervous manner. She was the only rookie of his that Hiccup was really worried about. He had taken her aside earlier, warning her that every time she was reprimanded by the veterans or the marching instructors or _anyone_ who knew what they were doing and **didn't** listen, she would be running a lap around tower field. Whether the threat would stick remained to be seen. Hiccup tried not to adopt Marie's pessimistic view regarding Ashlyn and her lackluster performance on the field, but he trusted Marie's judgment as well as his own instincts. Ashlyn had been absent without explanation during the summer sectionals and she had already displayed a frequent tendency to ignore well-meant advice. It was frustrating, but he was determined not to let it get to him. If anything, he had to be the big scary senior until Ashlyn learned that listening and being the best goddamn marcher out there was not optional.

"Alright! Alright! Quiet down, ye noisy lot! Save yer energy for when ye get out there!"

At the bellowing voice of the band director, the chatter came to an abrupt halt and the students settled back into their seats as the director entered the room. A few murmurs went up from the rookie population. He took some getting used to. Everyone called him Gobber. If the man had another name, Hiccup didn't know what it was.

Blond, balding and nine-time winner of the Best Mustache in Berk County, Gobber possessed a thick Scottish accent. Natural, not carefully cultivated over the last decade like Stoic's. He had gone overseas for his college education, became fast friends with Stoic and that was the end of that. He had been a regular babysitter for Hiccup (not some of his more cherished memories) and Hiccup often suspected that it was Gobber who had talked his father into observing marching band with a more open mind.

He used to be dragon hunter, like Stoic, until the loss of his left arm and right leg had forced him into semi-retirement. The prosthetic limbs were good replacements, but they were no substitutes for the real things. Dragon hunting was hard work even for someone with all their limbs and harder for someone who had taken the hands-on approach like Gobber. He did work part-time as an adviser, his experience with dragons making him very good for the position.

What had driven him to become a band director was a story that Hiccup had yet to hear. It was, according to Stoic, something Gobber had decided on during his convalescence, but the reasoning had evidently been lost on Stoic as well. Hiccup entertained the idea that Gobber had gone for the position of band director because he liked music and had discovered that wrangling a bunch of teenagers was a lot like trying to wrangle dragons.

"All of ye, welcome to band camp." he said, looking over his victi-_-_ er, students. "This is the closest yer gonna get to hell week until college. Veterans, ye know how 'tis. This is one of the most grueling weeks in the entire season. Sweat, bugs, yeh name it, it's out there and it's gonna eat ye alive."

Gobber grinned widely, showing off the fake tooth in his lower jaw.

"Rookies, as far as ye should be concerned, marching band takes no prisoners. Ye pull yer weight and then some, or we'll be usin' yer backbones to lash down the pit equipment. We're startin' to run low. Keep breakin' 'em. Darn things are so fragile."

The rookies shifted about uneasily and looked at the veterans for assurance that this was not true. Gobber had a way of telling stories that really made a person wonder about their validity and the band students usually learned quickly not to take everything he said at face value.

Unfortunately, the rookies had not yet learned that. And the veterans took a sadistic sort of pleasure in watching the rookies try and figure out what was true and what wasn't.

"I hope ye all remembered your sunscreen." Gobber went on, rubbing his hands together. "And that ye brought lots and lots of water. It's seventy-nine degrees out there. And it's already one hundred and three out on the tarmac. It's gonna be a hot one today, kiddies."

He pointed to the door.

"Now get out there and be the best goddamn band in Class D! Best goddamn band in the state! Or do ye **want** them damn trophy-mongers Paolini callin' themselves state champions again this year?!"

There was a roar from the band that shook a bit of dust from the ceiling. It didn't take much to pump up a marching band. Promise them popsicles at the end of practice for a job well done and the band would put on their best show of the night. Inform them that their biggest rivals were going to sweep State Finals for the fifteenth year and the band would be out for blood.

In a manner of speaking, it was like watching a barbarian tribe prepare for battle.

Hiccup wished that Ruffnut -_-_ had it been Ruffnut? Or Tuffnut? But whoever -_-_ had never made that observation, because he still couldn't get the mental image out of his head. His mental barbarians were big muscly Viking men and women about to go off and fight another tribe to the bloody death. It just didn't help that the school mascot was a Viking, the band was known as the Marching Vikings and Gobber easily looked like he could have been a Viking himself. Hiccup felt like was perpetuating something that should not be perpetuated every time he imagined himself wearing one of those horned helmets.

"Hey clarinets! Get over here!"

His section joined him by the bench.

"Okay, I know _you're_ plenty familiar with this," Hiccup said to Marie. "But I'm going to say it again to you guys." He addressed the rookies. "Projected highs are in the nineties all week. Hundred-something on the tarmac. The black tarmac that's going to soak in the heat like a sponge. It's going to be boiling out there in an hour. Don't use the heat as an excuse to slack off. You drink your water. You wear your sunscreen. Don't slack off. Got it?"

They nodded.

"Because if we slack off, Paolini will win State again." Marie said, eyeing the six rookies in a way that made them shrink back. "Here's the thing about the Pride of Paolini. They put on a nice clean show every year, but it's so _flat_. They have no imagination. No zest, no pizazz. And we're way better than that. We're Vikings, we're tough."

"On that note ladies, can I get a 'hell yeah'?" Hiccup requested.

There was a chorus of "Hell yeah!", but only Marie sounded any kind of enthusiastic.

"Oh c'mon, that was weak." Hiccup groaned, shaking his head. "Are you band geeks or not?! Again! From the diaphragm!"

"Hell yeah!" they shouted. It was a little better, but Marie still drowned the rookies out.

"Again! Use your lungs!"

"_Hell yeah_!"

"I still can't hear you!"

"_HELL YEAH_!"

This time, the rookies took it as an affront, of sorts, and bellowed from the very bottom of their lungs and just about deafened him.

"That's better, now are we going to own this season?" Hiccup challenged, fully in the groove of getting his section fired up.

They roared an affirmative reply.

"Then get out there and be goddamn good marchers!"

There was a sort of a scuffle over Marie's gigantic tub of chalk. She had already with-held a shade of bright red for herself and a particularly toxic shade of green for Hiccup, but the tub still had so many cool and interesting colors and many of the veterans had not bothered to bring their own chalk because they knew Marie would have a lot of it.

The barbarians looking for the proper colors to paint their faces in the most shocking shades imaginable to frighten their enemies into thinking they were demons from the pits of Hell itself.

The image persisted even as they streamed out of the band suite in a semi-orderly column and walked almost in step across the commons and down the athletic hallway.

The air was warm and humid. Hiccup was immediately struck by just how much the temperature had risen in just an hour. He had left the house in a light sweatshirt and now part of him wanted to do away with his shirt. If it was already one hundred and three out on tower field at nine in the morning, he didn't want to imagine how hot it would be by the time they went in at noon.

He thought he could already see the wavy heat lines rising up from the marching field.

Tower field, as the band called it, had once been the teacher parking lot until the administration had been granted an expansion when the school had first started to grow. The parking lot had been resurfaced and painted with yard lines and hash marks, and the fifteen-foot tower constructed in front of the fifty-yard line. It was a bit of walk from the school doors; all the way back behind the school buses' gravel parking lot and separated by a thick grassy median.

On the way there, someone screamed.

Nearly the entire band whirled about defensively, coolers and rolled-up charts and chalk sticks ready to be used as weapons. They saw the oboe rookie looking quite faint and pointing towards the parked school buses where a Monstrous Nightmare had stretched itself across the roofs of three buses, its wings spread out to their fullest extent. Large yellow eyes had slid open at the rookie's scream and tongues of flame flickered along the dragon's snout.

"Hey! Don't get your panties in a knot!" Snotlout shouted at the rookie. "That's just Hookfang! He's always hanging out here!"

The oboe rookie did not look relieved by the news and neither did many of her fellows. Indeed, they hurried past the gravel parking lot with their heads down as if afraid to make eye contact for even a second; even while the flickering flames vanished and the Nightmare settled its head back down on the roof of the bus, yellow eyes closing. They weren't used to dragons being so close. Dragons typically steered clear of human-inhabited areas. At least by day. Hiccup had often seen them wandering along the streets after dark.

The veterans, on the other hand, were too used to having the Monstrous Nightmare around that they didn't give it much of a second thought.

"Rookies." Hiccup scoffed to Astrid, who shook her head.

"They'll have to get used to it." she agreed.

There was something about the combination of music and the motion that the dragons found pleasing. Evening practices were often overseen by up to two dozen dragons and that was just the ones who chose to land.

The grassy median turned into a buzz of activity as the band students poured across it to the boundary of tower field; each section staking out a claim on the edge of the grass. There was a shallow ditch in the middle of the median that got squishy and muddy after the rain. It was second nature to avoid it.

"I want to run over the first set of charts before we move onto the new stuff!" Gobber shouted as he made his way over to the tower. "Get yerselves set up in a parade block in five minutes to start stretching!"

"Drink some water and get onto the field. When Gobber says five minutes, he actually means 'two'." Hiccup informed his rookies.

Described in one word, marching band was repetitive. It involved a group of teens from twenty to two hundred or more attempting to hit specific marks at a speed of anywhere between one hundred-seventy and one hundred-eighty beats per minute on a slick grass field while looking like one entity from above and producing the best sound possible.

That was not easy to do. There were all sorts of factors that could foul up a marching band's show; wet grass, mud, dirt clods, inclement weather conditions and sometimes, poor visibility between the band and the drum major. The band had to be prepared for all these things and compensate accordingly. Adjusting to accommodate the poor conditions had to become second nature so the show could take first priority. When the band was out there on the field, putting on the best show was the only thing that mattered.

That was where repetition came in.

A marching band turned repetition into an art form, quite literally. Charting the show was a tedious process of matching the spot on the paper to the spot on the field, then waiting for the drill instructors to smooth out the form before being allowed to mark the chart. In between, they marched from chart to chart to make sure that the transition was smooth. And they did this again and again until they couldn't get it wrong.

On the outside, Hiccup was sure that the whole thing looked intensely boring. His father had certainly thought so. Heck, Stoic thought band itself was boring. He used to drag his son along to the high school football games solely as an attempt to get him interested in the sport as a spectator, but had always left Hiccup to his own devices come half-time. Hiccup had always taken advantage of his father's distraction to get as close as he could to the field to watch the marching band present their show in front of the audience. The band had done a better job of enthralling Hiccup than the heavily padded teenagers bowling each other over for a bit of oblong-shaped rubber. Maybe it was the lack of painful violence.

Whatever it was, it had appealed to his creative side.

Marching band wasn't always about the music and the marching and the performances. It was also about the people you performed with; the camaraderie that developed between band-mates -_-_ the people you spent three months seeing more of than your own family. It was about pouring your heart and soul into a new creation and knowing that you'd been a part of making it come to life.

Marching band was the process of imagination given visual form.

Hiccup didn't think it could ever be boring.

* * *

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	5. Personalities Collide

**A/N:** It's still Tuesday in my neck of the woods. Let's go for a two-fer.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Five: Personalities Collide

* * *

"C'mon Ashlyn! The longer you take to run your laps, the less time you'll have for lunch! And you've still got two more to go!"

Ashlyn might have given Hiccup the finger, but if she had, he missed it when Astrid sidled up next to him.

"I thought it was just one more." she said.

"One extra for making **me** stand out here waiting on her." Hiccup muttered with more than just a slight vindictive tone in his voice. "Astrid, you don't have to stay out here too. Go eat lunch."

"I'm keeping you company." she said. "Besides, I'd rather not be there if the twins start throwing their food at each other." she added with a frown. If the twins started fighting during meal-times, they usually regressed to toddlers armed with peas. Astrid had once had the joyful experience of washing chocolate pudding out of her hair and she was not keen to repeat it.

Hiccup remembered this (it had happened to him too) and continued watching Ashlyn's progress around the perimeter of tower field. Nine times this morning she had failed to acknowledge a veteran's advice. Apparently it meant nothing unless it came from either Gobber, or Mr. Todd and Mr. Jacobs, two of their drill instructors who had been present today. She had pissed and moaned when Hiccup told her to run ten laps, but to be fair, he **had** warned her well in advance.

She was going to be a fun one to deal with; Hiccup was really starting to understand that. Marie had been right. Ashlyn was going to be one of _those_ people. Someone who had a modicum of playing talent, but didn't possess the drive and the determination required for marching band and had only joined because their friends had too. The people who didn't realize that marching band was actually a lot of work and afforded absolutely _zero_ opportunity to slack off while they were "on the clock", so to speak.

Sure, it looked easy and fun on the outside, but the sheer amount of multitasking that went on from one chart to the next threw "easy" off a cliff.

If Ashlyn had been looking for a class that would let her slack off with her friends and still get a good grade, then she should have signed up for Music Appreciation.

This was marching band. Things actually happened.

If they were really lucky (not that Hiccup thought they would be), Ashlyn would get booted out. It was still early in the season. They could fudge the hole.

The morning practice had been something like hell. The temperature had climbed quickly and everyone had been slick with sweat within the first half-hour. Gobber ran a hard band and he expected nothing less than their A-game. It was nothing the rookies had been prepared for. Some of them had wobbled under the heat and had ended up on the sidelines feeling dizzy and faint. Gobber had spent had entire ten-minute break expounding the reasons they had coolers and water out here and how important it was to stay hydrated and if for some bizarre reason they had failed to bring water, then there was Kool-Aid and Gatorade and no one is going to the hospital on my watch! Hiccup had watched his rookies like a hawk during breaks, making sure they were getting some water in them before he let them back onto the tarmac.

Needless to say, it was relief to end morning practice.

Ashlyn puffed her way through her final lap and slogged up to her section leader like she had just been put through inhumane torture that would have given the Supreme Court a collective aneurysm,

"Can I go in now?" she asked with a barely concealed note of contempt in her voice.

"Yes you can, but remember: the next time a veteran tells you something, listen to them." Hiccup said firmly. "Next time you fail to listen, I may just let Marie decide how to address your inattention."

"You don't want that. Trust me. She's diabolical. She'll probably make you run a lap around the school. With weights on your ankles. While you give her a piggyback ride. In this heat. She weighs more than she looks." Astrid told her. Marie was vindictive on a good day; downright sadistic on a bad.

"Yeah, there's a reason Fishlegs has started calling her a 'Dark OverLord'." Hiccup said.

"With minions."

"Right, she has minions now. Watch out for them."

Another one of those 'you are so full of crap' looks came sneaking out, but Hiccup ignored it in favor of getting to his lunch break in a much more timely manner. Since both Astrid and Hiccup had managed to convince one of their respective section-mates to take their water coolers in for them, they set off across the grassy median and back to the athletic hall entrance while Ashlyn gathered her things.

"Way to go, Hiccup. Threatening your rookies with your scariest section-mate." Astrid mumbled when she was certain they were out of earshot.

"Well, you were no help. You were egging me on." Hiccup pointed out.

"I know, but it's so easy to make up scary things about Marie." Astrid reminded him. "Because- y'know, if she hears a rumor about herself, she usually tries to make it true."

"Believe me Astrid, I'm familiar with Marie's _modus operand_." the section leader assured her wearily. He sighed heavily. "Oh, she's going to be the difficult one. Never showed up for any of the June sectionals and I didn't exactly make those one hundred percent optional. Remember the parade practice back in July? Right before the Fourth? Ashlyn was half an hour late for no reason and she still had the gall to point out that Marie was late too. You should have seen the look on her face when I said I knew that Marie wasn't going to be coming. For a moment, I thought I'd taken a winning lottery ticket from her."

"So... she was hoping that Marie would get in trouble for being late?"

"Think she was really looking forward to it."

Astrid had to re-route her train of thought, starting to see what the problem was. This wasn't Hiccup complaining for the sake of complaining, but having a genuine grievance with his most uncooperative rookie.

"I was going to say that there's a Snotlout in every section..." she started, but trailed off.

"I'll take my cousin over Ashlyn any day. She's not deliberately obtuse; she really is that stupid."

"What makes you say that?"

"For one thing, she still isn't convinced I don't respond to my actual name. She thinks we're making fun of her." Hiccup replied.

Astrid blinked in bewilderment. "What... You **don't** respond to your actual name."

"I know. I've been 'Hiccup' for so long that when I hear 'Jacob', it just doesn't register. Even the teachers figure that one out." the section leader said. "Aw hell, even my _dad_ calls me 'Hiccup'."

"That's when you know your legal name is long gone; when your parents use the nickname." Astrid nodded, still baffled over the idea. "What makes her think you're making fun of her?"

"According to her, it's not possible to stand two feet behind someone and repeat their name for a minute straight and not get a response unless they're actively ignoring you." Hiccup replied.

"Where'd she get an idea like that?"

"You tell me. You're the first person who started calling me 'Hiccup'."

It was something to thank Astrid for, at least. The nickname wasn't terribly humiliating and there was no blackmail-worthy story behind it; just a swift punch in the arm and Astrid shouting: "Hiccup! Stop hogging all the black crayons!", and then a few further punches to assure him that she was in fact talking to him.

The reason it was something to thank Astrid for was that it had finally given Snotlout something to call him.

For whatever reason, Snotlout had never liked Hiccup's legal name and refused to so much as acknowledge its existence. This had caused Stoic some distress, as "Jacob" had been one of Val's choices. No amount of reprimanding from the Jorgenson parents had changed that. Indeed, until kindergarten when Astrid had baptized Hiccup with his nickname, Snotlout had known his cousin by a variety of other monikers, the most common of them being "Weenie-boy".

They let themselves back into the school, picking up a more lively pace when the cool air washed over them and hurried back to the band suite to eat lunch. By the time they arrived, there was evidence that the twins had been throwing food at each other. A wad of used paper towels had been crammed in a plastic bag between Marie and Fishlegs, Tuffnut was still dragging a napkin through his hair and Ruffnut had smear of something brown on her pants leg.

"Hey Hiccup," Marie greeted him lazily. "How is our little nimrod?"

"I think she'll shut up and stop acting like a little nimrod. For now, at least." Hiccup replied. He leaned against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting flat on the floor beside his cooler. He flipped the top open and started rummaging around for his lunch. Astrid sank down beside him and tugged her own cooler closer.

"Next time she acts up, send her our way." Snotlout offered. He punched his palm with his fist and grinned ferally. "Coupla rounds with us and she won't know what hit her."

Marie snorted derisively. "Your ego?"

"Hey! We're percussion! Our ego is deserved!" Snotlout said righteously. "We're a lot better than you creepy little woodwinds!"

"I take pride in my creepy little woodwind status!" Marie snapped back. "Least I'm not holding a giant round thing around my crotch and beating on it!"

Hiccup cast a look over at Astrid. Their eyes long enough to give each other a long-suffering look, as if to say: _There they go again..._ Snotlout and Marie had been engaging in some kind of feud-thing pretty much since the day they had met. Hiccup didn't know what had started it, but they disliked each other to the point where they deliberately cajoled one another into an argument over nothing at all. He was sure it was more of a case of clashing personalities, because it was easy for them to put aside whatever bothered them and focus during practice and competitions.

Nonetheless, half the time Hiccup didn't know who he oughta be rooting for.

"Huh, you guys are all talk. Everyone knows trumpets are the best." Tuffnut said proudly, straightening out of his usual slouch. "And I'm the best of the best."

Ruffnut all but body-slammed him into the floor. "Like hell you are! Everyone knows that I'm the trumpet prodigy! I'm the one who got the solo! I'm the one sitting in the first chair!"

"You both got the solo." Astrid reminded them, sitting down beside Hiccup. "And you're joint section leaders. Making you both first chair."

"Yeah!" Tuffnut shot at his sister. "You also hit like a girl!"

Ruffnut promptly socked her twin on the nose. Tuffnut yelped in pain and shoved her off, scrambling out of arm's reach.

"I am hurt! I am very much hurt!" he wailed, clutching his nose and sort of staggering to his feet. "I think I'm bleeding!"

"A little blood never hurt anyone." Ruffnut muttered, surreptitiously rubbing her knuckles on her leg. God, her brother had such a hard head.

"I'm definitely bleeding!" Tuffnut brought one of his hands away from his nose, his fingers a little smeared by blood.

Ruffnut grinned predatorily. "Now do I hit like a girl?"

"Naw, you still hit like yer throwin' around slabs of meat." Tuffnut retorted, pinching his nose shut. A little bit of blood couldn't stop him from insulting his sister. "No momentum at all."

"I can see blood leaking down your face." Marie commented, making a small gesture to her own upper lip.

Hiccup took a closer look at the twin's face and saw the blood was squeezing out between Tuffnut's pinched fingers, despite the pressure. Nonetheless, Tuffnut acted like this was a mark of honor.

"Oh-_-_ Fishlegs? Think you can be the smart one today?" Hiccup looked imploringly at his friend.

"Sure." Fishlegs put down his sandwich and got to his feet. "Tilt your head back and don't pinch your nose too hard. And don't tilt your head too far or you'll swallow some of that blood."

"Blood is awesome!"

"When did you become a vampire?"

The little group didn't really move until the doors had swung shut behind the other two.

"Don't need no penis to do what Ruffnut did." Marie exclaimed righteously.

Ruffnut's smile would have reduced a small child to tears. "Rock on."

They fist-bumped, looking massively smug for longer than was strictly necessary.

"Astrid? You want in on this?" Marie asked, extending her fist to the colorguard captain. Astrid looked at the fist, then shrugged and tapped her knuckles to Marie's.

Snotlout rolled his eyes at the display of feminine power and proceeded to devour his pudding cup in a manner reminiscent of wild dogs. The girls settled back into their spots and continued eating lunch, until Astrid realized that she was being stared at.

"You're not gonna turn on me too, are you?" Hiccup asked her worriedly.

"Don't worry, Hiccup. I'm not as evil as Marie." she assured him, sending a glare at the other senior clarinet as she did.

"I am not evil. I'm opportunistic." Marie corrected.

"And sadistic." Ruffnut added.

"And clever."

"And psychotic."

"But not evil."

"Big difference."

"Urg..." Snotlout groaned at a bag of celery sticks he had just taken out of his cooler. "Shouldn't have let Mom pack my lunch." He tossed them at Hiccup. "Here, you can have them."

Hiccup dodged the bag expertly. "I'm not eating your stupid celery sticks!"

"Hey, I don't want them either!" Ruffnut chucked them back in Snotlout's direction.

"Well, I'm not eating them! Here Astrid!" The burly percussionist lobbed the bag at Astrid who, in an admirable display of hand-eye coordination, batted it in Marie's direction, who promptly kicked them back towards Snotlout.

"Hey, I said I _didn't_ want them!" he protested.

"Wait, wait! Give 'em here!" Marie jumped to her feet to snatch the flying bag of evil vegetables and marched out of the band suite. A moment of expectant silence passed then there were several loud squeals of surprise and a moment later, Marie returned with a satisfied air and empty hands.

"If anyone asks, y'all know nothin' about any flying celery sticks." she told them sternly.

"I dunno what you're talking about." Ruffnut commented innocently, lacing her fingers behind her head.

"So, Aunt Aggie's watching her weight again." Hiccup commented.

Snotlout snorted. "Wouldn't care if she didn't try to make us follow the same diet." he grumbled. "I had to eat Weetabix for breakfast."

"Poor baby! I had bran flakes!" Marie sneered back, only partially in jest.

"That only 'cause you take out almost all the raisins." Hiccup pointed out. For some reason, Marie simply couldn't stand very many raisins in her raisin bran. That somewhat defeated the purpose of raisin bran.

"Well, your mother obviously cares enough about you to ensure that you don't get all flabby." Astrid said to the percussionist.

"I'm not flabby. This, Astrid, is all muscle." Snotlout boasted, flexing his arms, blissfully ignorant of the disgusted noises from the surrounding girls.

Hiccup didn't doubt that some of it was muscle -_-_ he had seen the gym set in the attic and all of it was used regularly. But Aunt Aggie routinely cooked up high-calorie meals with enough grease and fat to fell a bull elephant. That was fine for Uncle Spitelout. He was a dragon hunter, so he needed the caloric fortification. Snotlout, on the other hand, didn't.

Just then, they heard one of the underclassmen storming into the band suite, loudly demanding to know who had dropped a bunch of mushy celery sticks on them. As one, the remainder of the group looked at Marie.

"I might had chewed on them a little." the blonde admitted.

Astrid nodded her head in confirmation. "Evil. Evil and sadistic."

* * *

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	6. Dragons

**A/N:** Oh what the hell. Let's just do this.

Oh, this chapter contains a Tumblr-induced easter egg. The question is, can you find it?

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Six: Dragons

* * *

The dinner hour got off to a predictable start.

"Gimme the freakin' keys!"

"You hogged the car all last week! It's my turn!"

"You drove here and nearly killed us! I am totally driving for the rest of the week, even if I have to beat you up and tie you to the luggage rack!"

It usually consisted of the twins trying to figure out who was going to drive this time.

They had to share the car between themselves. It was a good car; almost new too with all sorts of shiny things that made some people envious. Truthfully, the twins had the best ride in the school. Though most people wondered why their parents -_-_ who were fairly well off -_-_ just didn't buy a second car so the twins would stop fighting all the time over who got to drive.

Hiccup suspected it was _because_ the car was new and shiny and expensive. If there was only one car between the two of them, they wouldn't start arguing over who had the better car and wind up sabotaging the other's ride.

On the other hand, it meant that unless the twins were in total agreement about the driving arrangements, they never really got anywhere until they had made up their minds.

It was bothersome when they only had a limited amount of time for dinner.

"We should really stop them." Astrid commented absently, watching the twins fight with a sort of fascinated look on her face.

"Yeah..." Hiccup nodded, just as absent. "Snotlout, go stop them."

"Yeah right." Snotlout snorted and backed up a step. Then he gave Fishlegs a hearty shove forward. "You go stop them."

Fishlegs immediately backpedaled in the name of self-preservation. "I'm not stopping them." he said. "Where's Marie? Isn't this sort of her thing?"

"She got roped into chaperoning duties." Hiccup replied, inwardly pleased with himself that he had avoided being recruited.

During sectional time that afternoon, Steiny the drum major had announced that she didn't have enough seniors volunteering to chaperone the rookies for dinner and had cast a rather expectant look at the assembled woodwinds. Hiccup had spent the entire time trying not to catch her eye while Marie had shot him filthy looks for trying to get out of it. The rookie dinner was one of those functions that only the truly insane looked back on with fondness.

And, at times, Marie considered herself quite sensible, as opposed to insane.

Hiccup felt quite proud of himself for getting out of it, despite Marie's threat that something drastic would happen to him.

Without looking, Astrid punched Hiccup in the arm.

"Ow! What was that for?" he grumbled, turning away from the blonde girl in a protective gesture.

"For being a weenie." Astrid replied. She tilted her head, still eyeing the fight. "I wonder if Tuffnut realizes that Ruffnut is holding _his_ set of keys." She made flexing motions like she was physically steeling herself, then strolled forward towards the twins and swiped the keys from Ruffnut's hand. "Gimme those!"

"Hey!"

"If you two can't decide like normal mature eighteen-year olds, then neither of you are driving." the colorguard captain snapped, holding the car keys out of reach. "Now, I don't like treating you like two-year olds, but if that's the way you're going to act, then that's the way you're going to be treated."

"I'm not two years old!" Both of the twins shouted in unison.

"I'm not seeing it." Astrid commented disapprovingly. She pocketed the keys and came up with a quarter in their place. "Call it."

"Heads!" they yelled.

"I'm heads!"

"No, I'm heads!"

"In your dreams!"

"Maybe in your nightmares!"

And so on.

"Urgh... Let me know if they stop. I'm gonna take a piss." Snotlout announced, starting for the exit.

"Standing right here and didn't need to hear it." Astrid hissed at his retreating back.

"Must have said it a thousand times. I don't want to know when he's going to the bathroom." Hiccup muttered.

Meanwhile, the twins continued to squabble.

"So... What are we gonna do about them?" Fishlegs wondered.

"We could just take Hiccup's car. It can fit all of us, easy enough." Astrid suggested.

"It doesn't matter if they're twins. At the end of the day, my car still only holds five people." Hiccup said, but not-so effectively shooting the idea down, because Astrid came up with another suggestion.

"We could stuff Tuffnut in the trunk."

* * *

It wasn't enough to say that Hiccup was glad to finally get home after a long day.

They did end up stuffing Tuffnut in the trunk and he actually kind of enjoyed it, though he did swear revenge on Astrid for suggesting it and bloody revenge on his sister for putting him in there.

The rookie dinner hadn't gone down smoothly, if Marie's account was anything to go by. They were officially banned from Papa Joe's Pizzeria for the next thirty days for reasons that the other seniors refused to elaborate upon, though Marie had promised Hiccup and the others full disclosure once tempers over the incident had cooled down. She had left them with the tantalizing hint that several members of the Pride of Paolini had turned up. Given the rivalry between the two bands, one didn't need to stretch their imagination too far on what might have happened.

Halfway through the evening practice, the rookies had started to get rather restless and nervous. Part of it was just the grind of a long day coming to an end, but most of it was attributed to the dragons that had gathered at the edge of the field to watch them. They had all gotten a kick out of the Night Fury's presence, but they hadn't been terribly enthused by the way Hookfang kept lighting up his scales every time they hit the park-and-blow spots in the music. Gobber's instruction to "give the dragons a good show! It's what they're here to see!" had failed to reassure the rookies in any form.

Hiccup really couldn't put words to the relief he felt in stepping through the back door to the kitchen. It was illuminated by a single light above the sink and smelled as though Stoic had cheerfully burnt his dinner to a crunchy crisp again. Typical. Stoic was practically living as a bachelor, but he was also a father and they couldn't live off of take-away all the time. His cooking skills were hit and miss. Mostly miss. Dinner most often tended to veer in the direction of "slightly overdone".

And if he got really distracted, then dinner gained the status of "charcoal briquette".

This smelled like one of those times.

Not really willing to turn on the light and find out what had been singed to the point where it was no longer recognizable as food, Hiccup dropped his cooler on the counter and slung his bag into a chair at the table. He had taken two steps towards the fridge when he heard it; a distinctive hissing-spitting sound, like someone repeatedly tapping a finger on the nozzle of a pressurized air hose.

The survival instincts that Hiccup had been born with kicked into gear and his mind quickly categorized the origin on the noise.

There was a Frilled Whipspitter in the house.

They were small dragons; more serpentine than draconian. They averaged about four feet in length with stubby little legs and as the name implied, they had a frill around their necks. Deceptively harmless-looking, they were one of the few dragons that Stoic wouldn't take on in a direct fight. They were the King Cobras of dragons.

The Frilled Whipspitter and its cousin the Hooded Whipspitter vied for the position of most poisonous dragon on the face of the planet, with the Puff Nadder coming in as a close second. The two species of Whipspitters were indigenous to Australia (like all immensely poisonous critters), but a collector of rare creatures had misplaced his population of both species and they had skittered out across the dry expanse of the American West to breed faster than rabbits.

But whereas the Puff Nadder only had a problem with its vain cousin, the Deadly Nadder, the Whipspitters had a problem with _everyone_. They were highly territorial little bastards and really didn't care if you were there first. The only way to deal with a Whipspitter was to kill it and the Dragon Laws (really the guidelines for dealing with dragons, not actual laws) stipulated a "kill of sight" order.

Hiccup strained his hearing, trying to ascertain the source of the hissing. Other than that noise, the entire house was dark and silent. Stoic's truck was in the drive, meaning he was probably holed up in a corner with a handful of knives, waiting for a chance to catch the Whipspitter unawares.

But Hiccup could hear it right now and he tried not to breathe too loudly. He had been told horror stories about the Whipspitter; about how anyone unlucky enough to be bitten by one died within a minute; how their bodies rotted and their limbs fell off before they were even dead. Stoic had told these stories to his son in a well-meant effort to "prepare" him, but all he had really done was give the boy nightmares.

It sounded like the Whipspitter was hiding out under the stove. The stove was probably still nice and warm from when Stoic had burned his dinner and the thing really hadn't started hissing until Hiccup had started for the fridge. He had to pass in front of the stove to get to the fridge.

Very slowly, Hiccup moved towards the table instead, going backwards with each step. His intention was to get out the door and to the garage and come back with the chainsaw or something. But the Whipspitter saw his movements much differently; perhaps interpreting them as threatening. There was a skittering sound of scales on linoleum and with a leathery rustle of wings, the serpentine dragon was airborne.

It only took him a split-second to react. There was a knife on the tabletop, its curved edge gleaming brightly under the light. Hiccup seized it and hurled it in a practiced throw towards the back-lit form appearing suspended in mid-air.

He didn't really see what happened because the second the knife left his fingers, he turned and made a dash for the hallway. Several things happened at once; there was a heavy ***thunk*** sound and the Whipspitter let out a pained screech, and the kitchen light went on without warning, blinding him to everything but brightly colored afterimages. He ran right into something very solid that he fleetingly thought might have been the wall and toppled over.

"Hiccup! Get out of the way!"

One of Stoic's large hands closed around his upper arm and hoisted him effortlessly to his feet.

"There's a Whipspitter in the house!-_-_"

Hiccup only staggered when Stoic tried to shove him into the hallway. It didn't work because the teenager could hardly see where he was going and this time, he really did run into the wall.

"Stay back! Let me handle this!"

"Dad!"

Hiccup groped around for a second before he got a hold of his dad's arm and aborted the throw Stoic had been about to make. He opened his eyes, squinted a little and had to blink a few times before the afterimages stopped dominating his vision.

"I don't hear it." he said. "The Whipspitter. I don't hear it."

Stoic tilted his head and listened into the silence for any sign of the serpentine dragon. Whipspitters hissed like mad ninety-eight percent of the time. The only time they wouldn't hiss was if they were sleeping or dead.

A familiar rustling made them both turn defensively and they spotted the Whipspitter at the same time.

"Oh..."

The Whipspitter was pinned to the wall above the stove by the thrown knife, its body still wiggling and writhing weakly around the blade. It was a critical hit; the knife had severed some important blood vessels and the dragon was bleeding out. Fearless now that the danger was averted, Stoic went right up to dying dragon and examined the critical wound. The dragon opened one eye and hissed its last at the hunter.

"Ooh, right through the neck. Good aim, son." he complimented, quite proud that the knife-throwing lessons had paid off in the long run. "At least it wasn't a Hooded Whipspitter." he added with a chuckle. Hooded Whipspitters were- well, the spitters were as the frilled variety actually had to bite you.

"That's sort of not the point, Dad." Hiccup said exasperatedly, shaking off the adrenaline in his legs. "The fact is, it was in the house. How did it get in? You keep telling me that your traps are foolproof."

"Must be another hole in the basement I haven't found yet." was Stoic's thoughtful answer while he examined the dead Whipspitter from all possible angles. "Don't worry, I'll find it and plug it up. And I'll set some more traps, just to be safe."

"Great, let's make the basement even more dangerous. Dad, remember when this happened?" Hiccup showed him the pale, crescent-shaped scar on his elbow. That one had taken eight stitches to close up. "I went down to get the laundry and one of your traps exploded on me. Just remember that the washer and dryer are down there."

"Hmm, it might have wiggled in underneath the pipes..." Stoic muttered, plainly having only heard every other word. He started to work the knife out of the wall and the dragon's body.

"Never mind!" Hiccup threw up his arms in defeat and walked away. "I'll just start bringing a stick with me so I can poke at anything that looks remotely dangerous."

"You do that. I'll get rid of this." Stoic freed the knife and the dragon, leaving an unsightly smear on the wall. "And don't touch the wall or the stove until I've scrubbed it down. You speared one of the poison sacks."

"Mop the floor." Hiccup suggested, watching various draconian fluids drip onto the linoleum until Stoic whisked the body away out the back door. He bet that quite a lot of dragon blood had been dripped on this floor too many times. A few more drops might not have made a difference, but he didn't want think about how many different species' blood had gotten onto the kitchen floor over the years.

While Stoic put the incinerator in the garage to good use, Hiccup cleaned out his cooler, put two new bottles of water in the fridge and set about making lunch for the next day. He intended to find something for dinner when he was finished, but he rather lost his appetite when Stoic returned sans the corpse of the Whipspitter, but bearing something roughly the size of his torso. He set it down on the table with a heavy thud.

"Dad, what is that?" Hiccup asked, pointing at the huge white, pointy thing now adorning about a quarter of the round table.

"The skull of a Saber-Toothed Bonehorn." Stoic dusted his hands off and looked at the skull with a satisfied expression.

"North American?"

"Yep."

"What's it doing in the house?" Hiccup wondered, the same question he asked whenever a part of dragon found its way into the house and he usually got the same answer.

"It's a trophy." Yep, that was the usual answer. "That little bastard went down hard. Remember when this happened?" Stoic held up his left hand, which bore two splinted fingers still a week or two away from being declared fully healed. "Missed the nerve bundle twice, cracked my fingers, and ended up snapping its neck."

"But why do you have the skull? In the house?" Hiccup would never understand his father's fascination with bringing home bits of his recent kills. "You know exactly where that thing's been!"

"Relax Hiccup, it's been sanitized within an inch of its life." Stoic patted the skull like it was a dog. "There's roasted chicken and mashed potatoes in the fridge, if you're hungry. Mrs. Overland doesn't think I'm feeding you enough." he grumbled.

Hiccup wanted to say that Stoic really wasn't -_-_ burnt food wasn't appetizing and school food was best avoided so he was the skinniest, scrawniest thing this side of anorexia and Mrs. Overland was the hyperactive mother-type who kept plying them with food because she was worried that Hiccup was too skinny and small and definitely not eating enough for a growing boy his age -_-_ truly, it was a wonder her own son wasn't approximately spherical -_-_ but he settled for frowning at the skull instead. The Bonehorn scared him, even though it was dead. It had three rows of teeth and was said to be a link between sea dragons and sharks; if a sea dragon and a great white shark had ever gotten jiggy with it. The creators of Jaws had certainly played with the idea, setting the stage for a horror movie featuring a mutated shark-dragon hybrid so creepy-looking that not even science had wanted to fathom whether or not the union would produce an offspring like that.

Sharks and dragons were scary enough on their own, but a hybrid could follow you onto the beach after you had gotten out of the water?

No wonder the movie was a classic.

Leaving Stoic to find a place to mount the dragon skull, Hiccup went off to take a quick shower to wash the sweat and sunscreen off. Then he helped himself to Mrs. Overland's offerings and holed himself up in his bedroom for the night. He polished the meal off in a little less than ten minutes, then settled back in his chair with his sketchbook propped on his knees. For a moment, he just sat there and took in the atmosphere.

His skin had turned a faint pink with sunburn, his feet wanted to cede from the body and his muscles were sore in that good way. For the first time in twelve hours, his hair was not sticking to his skin because of sweat and the smell of sunscreen was absent. He felt kind of buzzed from the self-esteem high one got after accomplishing a lot in one day and as the effects of the adrenaline finally faded away, he started to feel sleepy. The air in his room was still warm, but all of his windows were wide open and the square fan mounted in one of them brought in the cool evening air. For that one moment, he couldn't hear anything beside the humming fan, the chirping crickets and the croaking bullfrogs.

Then his chair creaked and just like that, he put pencil to paper and started to sketch.

Band camp always left him with inspiration, but he suspected it had more to do with only a few chances during the day to whip out the pencil and paper, and not enough time to get the inspiration entirely out of his system.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was drawing at first, but after a few more lines, it starting coming out distinctly Night Fury-shaped. Hiccup smiled a little and put a little more confidence into his pencil strokes. The black dragon had always been a large source of inspiration for him. After all, there weren't many people who could say they saw one of the rarest dragons in the world day after day.

The Night Fury had been living Paramount for longer than Hiccup had been alive. Stoic could remember seeing it for the first time when he'd been around five years old, waiting to go to his first day of school. The way Hiccup's grandmother told the story, the Night Fury had barreled out of the hedge, claws and teeth bared and blue flames streaming out of its mouth. Stoic told the story much differently: the Night Fury had merely lain under the hedge and watched him with large green eyes until the bus had come. Hiccup was more inclined to believe his father's version of the story, because there were reasons his grandmother now took anti-psychotics and lived in a care home in Florida.

Stoic would also add, with a confused frown, that the Night Fury used to follow him around as well.

It took Hiccup a few minutes to realize that he was being watched and he raised his head to the meet the Night Fury's wide green eyes peering through the window in front of him. The roof extended three feet beyond his windows. Stoic had long-since reinforced the vaguely sloping ledge to take the dragon's weight, knowing that there was just no getting rid of the Night Fury and the best thing to do was learn how to accommodate its frequent presence.

"_I don't think it's really a danger, son."_ Stoic had said to him one morning a few years ago. _"You were never afraid of it; you used to walk right up to it all the time as a toddler. And it certainly likes you. I haven't forgotten what happened in Canada."_

"Stalker." Hiccup told the Fury. "How long have you been out there?"

The black dragon just warbled happily, seeming pleased that he was talking at all. Hiccup smiled and had to tighten his fingers around the edge of the sketchbook so he wouldn't lift his hand and try to pet the dragon. No matter how friendly and social it was with him, the dragon wasn't a household pet and he had no idea how it might take to the idea of him initilizing contact.

The Night Fury tilted its head, eyes focused on the sketchbook, and made an inquiring noise.

"Oh," Hiccup turned the book around so the dragon could see the drawing. The rough sketch was complete-ish; it depicted the Fury looking ridiculously adorable with a fish tail hanging out of its mouth. "Whaddya think? Think it looks like you?"

The Night Fury examined the sketch and then purred, a deep reverberating sound that Hiccup felt rumble in his chest. It was a sound of approval.

"I'll put some color on it when it's inked." Hiccup said, turning the sketchbook back around to continue working. "Think I should stick it on the fridge? I haven't done that in years. Dad would probably flip or something."

He was sure that approving purr started to sound like a snigger of laughter. With a chirr-sound from the back of its throat, the Night Fury leapt off the overhanging roof, its wings beating the listless evening air for just a moment. Then Hiccup heard taloned paws scrape gently on the roof over his head. The ceiling creaked at the dragon settled in for the night. Hiccup's grin softened.

"Good night to you too, buddy."

* * *

-0-


	7. It Only Sounds Dirty

**A/N:** This chapter contains shades of a plot.

At this point, I'd like to remind everyone that the satellite characters are all based on people I knew in marching band and that Marie is the self-insert who got away. So the thing going on between Marie and Ashlyn? Really happened and has been slightly exaggerated for the story.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Seven: It Only Sounds Dirty

* * *

"Senior meeting upstairs! Seniors, grab your food and head upstairs! Meeting time! Meeting time!" Steiny the drum major shouted, her voice blaring through the commons like a particularly piercing foghorn. "Senior meeting only! In the upstairs suite! Time for a senior me-e-eting!"

"A little louder, Steiny. Norway wasn't heard you yet." Marie muttered.

"Y'know, she could probably find work as a drill sergeant. The gods know she's got the voice for it." Hiccup said, trying to get his fellow senior to crack something like a smile.

Marie just grunted in an ill-tempered kind of way, her shoulders slouching even further until she was practically capable of giving Tuffnut's routine bad posture a run for its money. Another long morning of drill practice and this time, Marie had taken it upon herself to correct Ashlyn every time the rookie made a mistake. This had been done in an effort to live up to the "don't traumatize the rookies this time" edict Hiccup had laid down yesterday morning. It had been a very valiant effort, but by the end of the morning, Hiccup had decided that Marie deserved commendation just for not losing her temper.

Ashlyn had some sort of chip on her shoulder where the second-chair clarinet was concerned. What this problem was, Hiccup had absolutely no idea and he was starting to think that whatever the problem was, it was all in Ashlyn's head. If Marie had done anything, then it had not been done on purpose and the whole thing had been insignificant in the eighteen-year old's mind.

But whatever had happened, Ashlyn had chosen to deal with it by not listening to a single word that came out of Marie's mouth.

This had been _very_ poorly received, as Marie also had tendencies towards perfectionism that would have made an extreme Type-A personality weep with pride. Hiccup blamed her military parents for that, but he was on her side in this matter. Ashlyn wasn't out running twenty-three laps around tower field today just because he felt like being an ass.

"Don't do it again. Correcting Ashlyn, I mean." Hiccup instructed. "It just pisses you off. I don't want you losing your temper next time."

"And spend another morning torturing myself like that? Don't be stupid." Marie frowned at him and made a disgusted noise. "I think I'll just get back to traumatizing the rookies. That actually seems to do them good."

"D'ya think it'll help with Ashlyn?"

"No, but it'll help me feel better when dealing with her."

Hiccup sighed lightly. "Look, normally I wouldn't stand in the way of a system that works - for the most part - and I am really proud that you're trying, but I think I'll give diplomacy a spin first. If things haven't - cleaned up by tomorrow, I'll talk to Gobber, okay Marie?" he offered.

"Good luck."

"Hey, no worries. Gobber likes me."

"Go _Hakuna Matata_ yourself."

It was just surprising enough for Hiccup to stutter-step, allowing Marie enough of an opening to veer away from him, evidently needing some space. After this morning, he was willing to give it to her.

"Wow, that sounded _dirty_." Tuffnut commented, slouching up behind Hiccup. "What's got her in a mood? Shark week already?"

He barely dodged Ruffnut's fist. It was like instinct, Hiccup thought, since Ruffnut's fist came straight for the back of her brother's head and Tuffnut whirled out of the way, the bared knuckles missing him by a scant inch. He straightened up with an amused snicker.

"Dude, what have I said about bringing that up?" Ruffnut demanded.

"You never say anything! You just aim for the crotch!"

"That 'cause it's gross and wrong hearing about guys talk about it!"

"If you don't want me talking about it, don't make such a big deal out of it!"

Ruffnut's only retaliation was to flip her brother the bird and then went ahead to do her duty as best friend and see if she could break Marie out of the rookie-induced funk. Hiccup silently wished her luck.

"So what's going on?" Tuffnut pressed. "Marie doesn't get all depressed and junk during band camp. She's usually all, y'know, creepy."

"It's nothing, we're just having trouble the last-chair rookie." Hiccup summed up, since Tuffnut really wouldn't care about the details.

The trumpeter had to poke around his brains for the right memories. "Uh, you mean the who looks like a concussed cow?" he said, uncertain because he didn't pay much active attention to the other sections' rookies.

"She doesn't look like a-" Hiccup broke off when his brain compared images. "Okay, maybe she does. A little bit."

"Yeah, but seriously. What's the problem?"

Hiccup blinked and stared for a second until his brain had worked it out.

Tuffnut's concern was obvious, but only if you knew him well enough to read his facial expressions. He really only had three distinct expressions (angry, happy, or indifferent) and they all managed to involve some manner of sneer. It still managed to throw Hiccup a little when he found concern written between the lines of the trumpeter's indifferent expression. He always had to remind himself that Marie lived on the Touchstone side of Berk River Gorge and had gone to elementary school with the twins (and Fishlegs). Ruffnut and Tuffnut had known her for six years longer than Hiccup. More accurately, they had been **friends** with Marie for six years longer than Hiccup.

"That's the thing. I really don't know what's going on." the clarinet section leader replied. "As far as I can tell, Ashlyn hates Marie, but Marie has no idea why."

Tuffnut frowned. "Well that's not cool. Why would anyone wanna hate Marie? She's awesome. She can practically make things explode by looking at them."

"Ashlyn obviously found something to hate."

"Still not cool, hatin' on my best friend like that. Do you know where she lives?"

Images of toilet-papered trees, egged houses and saran-wrapped cars flashed through Hiccup's mind. Tuffnut's idea of revenge was the simple classics that typically created a huge mess. Ruffnut's approach to revenge was more- Hiccup hesitated to use the term 'sophisticated', but she did put some more careful planning into her ideas and liked to let her victims sweat for a couple of days beforehand.

But knowing well what the twins could accomplish when they put their minds to it and having been on the receiving end more than once, Hiccup replied that he didn't know where Ashlyn lived (it was true, he really didn't). Tuffnut looked disappointed, but only for a second and then his brow furrowed in thought. Not at all interested in what new ideas were going through the trumpeter's depraved little mind, Hiccup broke away as soon as he could, ducking through the doorway to the left, back to the woodwind instrument lockers. Setting his cooler down, he took his lunch out of it and made his way upstairs for the senior meeting.

The seniors gathered in the upstairs suite. There were seventeen of them and it still the original seventeen rookies who had begun in eighth grade. Hiccup settled onto the third riser and the group settled in around him. It appeared that Ruffnut had had some success with her duties as best friend; the tired cast had lifted from Marie and her eyes were back to sparkling with that insane 'I wonder how creative I can get with ripping your head off' look that she tended to wear when she was plotting. It never made Hiccup comfortable to see that look, but at least she was feeling much better. She never really let anything hang on her for long.

Steiny clapped her hands over the sound of rustling plastic and lunchbox zippers, getting everyone's attention.

"Okay, seniors! This is about the Friday sleepover." she announced. "We haven't got a lot of time to get planning done, so let's try and get a few ideas down before Friday, alright?"

The Friday night sleepover was one of the few immoveable traditions of the Marching Vikings band camp. It became misnomer when you were a senior, because the only people who **didn't** sleep during the sleepover were the seniors.

While the rookies through the juniors tried to get comfortable enough to sleep on the thinly carpeted floor of the band suite, the seniors (always coming off a fairly rigorous seven hours of practice - not to mention the entire preceding week - and usually strung out on sugar and caffeine by midnight) pulled an all-nighter to make breakfast for the rest of the band and put together some skits for the morning entertainment.

How "entertaining" this was often depended on how fast your brain was working at seven in the morning. Hiccup figured that the senior skit show was comprised of ideas that were positively hilarious at three in the morning, but the seniors were hardly engaged in what they were doing four hours later and something got lost in translation (as it were).

And now, it was his class's turn.

"Oh, I've got an idea." Astrid announced brightly, only to have everyone cut her off short with a resounding "NO!" She recoiled a little from the sheer noise and looked around at everyone in general confusion.

"Astrid, no offense, but all your ideas have sucked balls." Snotlout said and proceeded to cower away from the fire that flashed in her eyes. "I said no offense." he added hurriedly.

"My ideas have not sucked." Astrid said defensively.

"Sure they have." Tuffnut said brightly. "Like that time we found out dragon eggs explode when they hatch. Everything caught fire."

"It was _awesome_." Ruffnut agreed.

"Oh-kay, let's not pick on Astrid, c'mon." Steiny said, waving a hand. Her grin was good-natured. "Anyone else got an idea?"

Through the din of ideas and half-formed thoughts being offered up for potential skits, Astrid turned to Hiccup and asked: "My ideas haven't sucked, have they?"

"Uh... Would you like the honest answer or the lie?" Hiccup wondered, leaning away from the inevitable fist. It was best to just let Astrid know right away that she wasn't going to get an answer she wanted to hear.

While Astrid contemplated whether or not it would be worth getting defensive over this, no one heard Tuffnut turn to his twin and ask: "Wait, when did that happen?"

The seniors didn't spend too long making plans. The baritone section leader Baker, who was one of those naturally epic people who did awesome things without putting in any real effort to be awesome, offered to dance or something and his suggestion was met with a more horrified, more drawn-out "_NOO_!" By that time, everyone had consumed their lunch and the whole brainstorming session had pretty much fallen apart. Diligent though they were in other aspects, this particular group of seniors was much better at flying by the seat of their pants.

In twos and threes, the seniors filtered off back downstairs until it was just the usual group of seven left.

"Ooh, I wish Baker hadn't offered to dance. Now I can't get the imagery out of my head." Fishlegs moaned, looking a touch green around the gills.

"You said it." Marie agreed. "What is it about Baker that makes his dancing scary and disturbing and vomit-inducing?"

"The fact he dances very well to _Like a Virgin_?" Astrid suggested, prompting a collective moan out of the group.

"Astrid please, we just ate." Hiccup requested, hoping the conversation would turn away from things that wouldn't make him feel sick to his stomach.

"Man, band is so dirty sometimes." Snotlout commented, unknowingly dashing his cousin's hopes of a not-stomach-turning lunch conversation. "I mean, we get told to finger our parts."

"Trumpets use three fingers." Tuffnut said.

"Colorguard can handle any-sized pole." was Ruffnut's contribution.

"Percussion bangs harder!"

"Long, loud and lubricated!"

"And now we are officially out of context." Hiccup said, starting to see no way of aborting the conversation and trying to ignore the way both Astrid and Marie were giggling uncontrollably. "Gods, why can't we ever have normal conversations?..."

"'Cause normal's boring." Tuffnut said, throwing his hands behind his head. "It's like- sleeping. Nothing happens."

"I'd hate to be normal." Ruffnut decided. "Normal people don't have any fun."

"Yeah, we're not normal people. We're band people. We think about things that go way out of context." Marie said, nodding sagely. "Because when you really think about, band really is just chock-full of innuendo; I mean, the stuff I said yesterday about Snotlout having the snare around his crotch-"

"I'm not interested in your thought process!" Hiccup interjected very quickly. The last thing he wanted to hear this soon after lunch was his cousin's name and masturbation being linked together in the same sentence.

"Do your parents approve of you splashing around in the gutter?" Fishlegs inquired curiously.

"My parents aren't around to disapprove and my aunt moved out last May. I am the only legal adult in my house." Marie reminded them. She sounded a bit too happy about that (though anyone would be pleased with an ongoing lack of parental supervision).

"And what about your brother having a good role model?" Fishlegs pressed, crossing his arms. "Isn't he still young enough to be impressionable? Don't you think it might be bad for his development if you positively reinforce this behavior?"

Marie leaned forward, closing the gap between them by a couple of inches. Her eyes were narrowed and her face was molded into an expression of thoughtfulness. For a moment, it seemed like she might actually engaged in a semi-academic conversation on psychology. Then, with the utmost seriousness, she said:

"You can't lick your wenus."

It sounded dirty enough to get the twins sniggering again. Astrid muffled a snort into her hand.

"Most people can't, after all. It's just in a very awkward location that I think you need to be double-jointed in the tongue to reach." Marie went on. She was definitely aware that she had changed the subject on a dime, but it didn't stop her from being very serious about what she was talking about.

"I can totally lick my wenus!" Snotlout boasted proudly.

"Then prove it." Marie said to him, gesturing vaguely. "Do it now. Right in front of everybody. Go on, I dare you."

Hiccup marveled that he could actually see his cousin's bluster ebb and the way Astrid was all but strangling herself against her laughter was probably not helping the percussionist's confidence. Snotlout made a few cautious glances towards his lower body, but otherwise made no move to lick anything, prompting Marie to frown.

"Do you even know where your wenus is?"

"Of course I do!" Snotlout quickly recovered his bluster. "I'm just not gonna lick it because you'd all be blinded by how incredible it is!"

"Incredibly small?" Ruffnut sneered. She and Tuffnut exchanged not-really-discreet high-fives.

"Snotlout, I thought I made this clear earlier. I really, **really** don't want to hear about your penis. And neither does anyone else." Hiccup reiterated. "Trust me, it's nothing special." he added to the others.

Marie's eyes lit up with that Other kind of light that took "sadistic" to whole new definitions. "Oh Hiccup, do tell. Tell all." she requested.

"Yeah, I dunno how much there is to tell. But he wasn't completely toilet-trained until he was like, four and half. Basically, we were both almost in kindergarten and he had this habit of throwing off his diapers and going in the backyard. Kept telling his parents that dragons didn't use a toilet, so why should he?" Hiccup informed everyone while Snotlout puffed with anger and embarrassment. Hiccup just smiled beatifically at his cousin. "I think my dad got after you when you left that floater in the kiddie pool and threatened to feed you to a dragon."

The twins had lost any semblance of coherent speech and were bowled over, still trying to laugh between gasping breaths. Fishlegs seemed to be trying very hard to be polite and not laugh, but he was having some odd facial spasms. Red in the face, Astrid was clutching her stomach and sides like she was trying to keep herself together. Marie was practically glowing with this lovely blackmail material while Hiccup kept one eye on his cousin. Snotlout was clenching his fists menacingly, as usual, angered that those memories he had been trying very hard to repress for most of his life had been brought up. Again. He really didn't deserve this. Honestly, those mud puddles hadn't been _that_ muddy.

But Hiccup always got revenge in his own way and he tossed in one last zinger.

"The tree he kept going on died."

"_JACOB GERARD HADDOCK_!"

Hiccup went from a sitting position to on his feet in the blink of an eye and was vaulting over Fishlegs to escape the wrath of his cousin, forcing his sore muscles into action. Snotlout let out a bellow like a bull in heat and charged.

The clarinet section leader acknowledged that he might have crossed a line, but it was so satisfying to return a little bit of the karma. In his defense, Snotlout was his cousin and he was only morally obligated to be friendly with his cousin. He was allowed to make fun of Snotlout, but he also had to suffer the consequences if he wasn't fast enough. Because Snotlout was also only morally obligated to be friendly with his cousin and he was allowed to beat Hiccup up. When it came to things like fighting, Snotlout was quick on the draw, even if his strategy was mostly just "SNOTLOUT SMASH!"

Provided, that was, if he could catch Hiccup.

However, this wasn't one of those times where Hiccup out-ran his cousin. Snotlout caught him before he was out the door and punched him in the face.

* * *

-0-


	8. Electrifying

**A/N:** This chapter has been mostly preserved in its entirety. A general face-lift, but it's mostly identical to its original.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Eight: Electrifying

* * *

"Hey Hiccup, nice shiner." one of the saxes called out. "Where'd it come from?"

Hiccup instinctively placed a hand over his black eye. "Snotlout."

"What happened?" another of the saxes asked curiously. It wasn't every day that someone walked in with a big fat bruise on their face, especially one that was obviously fresh.

"He told us Snotlout used to pee on a tree before he was potty-trained." Marie replied before her section-mate could, talking around the reed in her mouth. Those within hearing range sniggered.

"Don't spread that around. I don't want a matching set." Hiccup said sternly, running his fingers lightly over the bruise. He was mildly impressed by its size and color.

"But you totally deserved it."

"Gods, definitely."

"Hiccup, that black eye isn't going to bother you much, is it?" Steiny the drum major asked, staring at the bruise with a slightly concerned expression.

"As long as I don't touch it." Hiccup assured her with a small smile. "And I took an aspirin. It'll be kicking in soon."

The woodwinds had gathered in the teacher's lounge for their afternoon sectional in a scraggly kind of concert arc. The teacher's lounge really wasn't as awesome as the student population imagined it was. There was no secret teacher's lounge that looked like a luxury spa or anything remotely special like that. It had been mostly ignored in the remodeling, so it was still a plain room with a long table, a couple of vending machines and a new couch. It was still large enough to accommodate the over two dozen woodwinds.

"Dad's gonna wonder where this came from. I haven't been beaten up in years." Hiccup remarked to Marie while they put their clarinets together.

"Just tell him Snotlout did it. Maybe he'll go after your cousin with a knife." the blonde replied, popping the reed into her mouth.

Hiccup laughed. "Only if Snotlout turns into a dragon."

"I thought he already was one."

The section leader laughed again and placed his reed in his mouth, wincing at the taste.

"New reed." he grumbled to Marie, who nodded sympathetically. New reeds always tasted like-_-_ well, like wood. One never really got used to that fresh-out-of-the-box taste.

The oboe rookie Paige, rolled her eyes and made kind of a derisive noise from her position between the clarinets and the flutes.

"And what are you rolling your eyes at?" Marie inquired.

"Nothing." Paige replied.

"No, no. I don't like it when you rookies dance around me like I'm gonna to peel your faces off and wear 'em like a mask. Tell it straight. What's on your mind?" Marie insisted. Her tone was almost sisterly.

Paige hesitated for a moment before choosing to say her piece. "You shouldn't let that guy get away with punching you."

"Who, Snotlout?" Hiccup waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it, he's my cousin. We used to get in fights all the time. 'Course, he always won... And still does..."

"Of course he always won; you were the teacup poodle to his bulldog." Marie pointed out. She had seen pictures. "Now it's more like you're the greyhound to his Great Dane. I mean, you're all -_-_ this."

Hiccup frowned. "Don't gesture to all of me."

"Sorry, there's really nothing specific _on you_ to gesture to." Marie pointed out. "You're just kind of-_-_" She made another encompassing gesture. "This."

"What did I just say?"

"Hey, it's not my fault you're **not** built like a brick shit-house like your dad."

"Whatever. Switch me places."

They scooted around each other as Steiny banged hard on the blue gock block, finally bringing the woodwinds to order. The veterans fell into line like a well-oiled machine (with the exception of two clarinetists who were trying to get the reeds on properly). She looked around at the woodwinds and then called for warm-up.

Without the brass and the percussion backing them, the warm-up sequence wasn't as robust as it usually sounded. The tenor saxes did their best to fill the gap, but the high voices of the flutes, the shrill scream of the lone piccolo and the slightly more mellow tones of the reed instruments typically dominated the sound. There were squeaks here and there when the rookies pushed too hard; woodwinds were a bit tricky. But discordant pitches slowly became harmonized as the instruments warmed up and the players checked to see if they were in tune.

And then there came the fun part: sixteenth note runs.

Despite their difficulty in executing, there was usually a sort of a love affair that each player developed before the end of the season. They were ridiculously fun to play and when done successfully, it gave the player a sense of accomplishment that usually lasted until they screwed up from overconfidence. And then they dove right back into it just to prove that the run wasn't as hard as people thought it was.

Hiccup would have loved to say that he was the best at sixteenth note runs, just for his ego. Certainly he was among the best, with quick fingers and an even quicker tongue, but the title of the best -_-_ in this case -_-_ without a doubt, fell to Fishlegs.

There were times that Fishlegs was just impressive. A bulky physique ran in both sides of his family, augmented by the deep-water fishing trip his family would take to the ocean every summer to catch 300-pound fish.

His parents were also engaged in the somewhat lucrative business of raising Bullrougher dragons. One of the dragon species that lent itself to domestication, Bullroughers were basically just scaly, reptilian cows with wings, horns and fire-breath; not overly-aggressive, omnivorous, and content to stay put (nonetheless, all two dozen of the Ingermans' Bullroughers were micro-chipped so they could be found if they chose to fly away). There was a modest demand for dragon hides and horns that could not be met by the slain dragons that hunters brought in. There was also a demand for dragon meat, but Hiccup understood that it was quite expensive; up there with most types of caviar in terms of price and taste. There was also a detoxification process dragon meat had to go through first, so the demand for it was really quite low.

Bullroughers were also wickedly stubborn and to get one to move on your command was the work of divine intervention.

That was why Fishlegs was impressive.

On top of that, he was incredibly intelligent. He was battling five other people in the senior class for the position of valedictorian and was considered half the reason Marie had passed her last math final. He had a head for facts and figures and dragons (and if he could just get away from using D&D stats to rank dragon species, people might start to take him a little more seriously).

And topping it all off was the fact that this year, he had been upgraded to piccolo. The tiny instrument had been in his possession for barely more than two months and despite this -_-_ despite his meaty fingers -_-_ he dashed through the sixteenth note runs with perfect precision.

That was why Fishlegs was so very, very impressive.

Then Steiny set the gock block down and they all flipped their folders open to the show music.

They were partway through the opener when Hiccup felt something brush across his foot -_-_ he had taken off his shoes at the earliest opportunity; most people did as they weren't going back outside until after dinner -_-_ and a shock went up his leg. It was like that time he had stuck his finger in an electric socket just to see why Snotlout kept getting a kick out of it. It didn't hurt -_-_ not really, but it did leave a funny tingling in its wake. It also had him yelping in surprise and leaping in the air, interrupting a stretch of silence where the brass would have been blasting away.

"Hiccup?" Steiny gave him another look of concern while he bounced around on one foot; the other one had gone numb.

"I got shocked." he replied, finally finding his balance.

"By what?" Marie wondered, looking at the carpeted floor. The floor was the only part of the teacher's lounge to be touched in the remodel; changed from ugly tiles to slightly more attractive carpet. Then her eyes went wide and she stabbed a finger at the floor. "Dragon!"

There was a general outcry, and woodwinds left and right piled onto the long table or the chairs or whatever elevated surface was immediately available to them, some with a speed that Hiccup would not have expected out of them; including his nimrod rookie Ashlyn.

The table creaked as everyone settled.

"I hate dragons! I hate dragons! I hate dragons!" Paige was practically crying, clutching her oboe to her chest. "Why can't they just stay outside where they belong?!"

"Because they're wild animals and don't always know where they belong?" Marie shot at the younger girl snidely.

"I'm okay with them being outside." someone commented.

"How did it get in?"

"How do we get it out?!"

Paige was still almost crying. "I hate dragons!"

"You just have a negative impression because of Hookfang!"

"Okay, calm down everyone." Steiny said, raising her hands for quiet. "It's just a dragon. Nothing new there. Marie, was it a really big one?"

"Not really. Couple inches." Marie held her hands about six inches apart. "It was kind of yellow-ish. But it still had teeth and if it shocked Hiccup..."

"It was probably an Electricsquirm." Hiccup decided, the pieces of information clicking together in his head. "They're not really dangerous. I mean, there's never been a report of one of those actually hospitalizing someone."

Over two dozen skeptical looks landed on him. Years of hearing that dragons were dangerous would do that to anyone and not everyone had reasonably detailed information about the beasts.

"Hiccup, dude... They're called Electricsquirms for a reason." Marie deadpanned, her eyebrows practically a flat line across her forehead. "So, got any bright ideas on how to catch it?"

All of a sudden, as if a thought had occurred to their collective consciousness, the woodwinds all turned to Hiccup expectantly.

"Why are you all looking at me?" he asked warily. He felt like he was about to be made into some kind of virgin sacrifice.

"Your dad hunts dragons for a living." Asian Josh reminded him. "That kind of makes you the school's resident expert on all things dragon." he added to the general consensus of the woodwind section.

"I don't know **that** much about dragons! I just answer the phone!" Hiccup pointed out, laughing. "If anything, Fishlegs is the resident expert!" he added, pointing to the other boy.

"Not me, I don't know anything about Electricsquirms." Fishlegs said, holding up his hands and momentarily losing his precarious balance on the very corner of the table.

"You don't?" Hiccup felt himself flounder suddenly. Something reliable in his world had just gone belly up.

"I lost volume two of the Dragon Manual before I could read it and I haven't been able to buy a new copy." Fishlegs admitted. "I don't know anything about dragons E through G. And-_-_ y'know, that information really isn't available online yet." He shrugged. "Guess you're the best person."

"No I'm not." Hiccup shook his head. "Really, I don't know that much about dragons. I know, my dad has brought home enough bones that we could probably construct a skeleton in the backyard, but that's it. I don't know anything."

"You left out the part where a Night Fury follows you just about everywhere you go." Marie hissed loud enough for everyone to hear.

"That doesn't count." Hiccup told her. It really wasn't a big secret that he had a Night Fury stalker anyways.

"Man, that would be awesome to have a dragon like-_-_ as a pet or something." said Topher, the second-chair sax, in a sort of envious tone.

"Dragons aren't pets!" Hiccup and Fishlegs shouted defensively.

"They're beautiful creatures that'll chomp your heads off if you're not careful!" Fishlegs said, putting his hands to his neck protectively. "They breathe fire or spit acid or pop your ear drums! You have to be careful!"

"And you can't keep a dragon as a pet! You have to earn their trust and they'll be just as dangerous to you as they are to their prey!" Hiccup added. He felt as though he had the absolute authority on that particular matter.

It took them both a moment to realize that they were being eyeballed warily and perhaps with some fright. Marie's eyebrows had all but disappeared into her hairline and Hiccup didn't like how her expression was very calculating. Fishlegs blushed slightly and settled back on his heels, mumbling an apology for his outburst.

"Well..." Hiccup unclenched a fist that he didn't realize was clenched at all. "Y'know..."

They didn't know, but judging from the looks on their faces, they weren't going to press the matter. Frankly, Hiccup was feeling a little embarrassed himself. He didn't just up and yell at people for their stupidity and/or ignorance. He didn't really yell at people at all. Neither did Fishlegs. Snotlout, the twins and even Astrid were more likely to jump down peoples' throats for being an idiot.

But Topher's comment... Dragons as pets... It had struck an unwelcome chord in Hiccup -_-_ and Fishlegs too by all appearances. Dragons could not be kept as pets. They were noble creatures who, despite being part-time nuisances, were to be treated with respect.

"Hiccup." Marie was holding her cell phone out. "I was thinking that if you don't know anything about Electricsquirms, you could just call your dad."

Hiccup took the cell phone and dialed his father's number, noticed everyone was still staring at him and angled his upper body away for at least a modicum of privacy. When it was answered, Stoic jumped in immediately.

"_Marie, I'm in the middle of something. This had better not be another prank call-_-"

"Dad, it's me." Hiccup interrupted, shooting a sidelong annoyed look at Marie who proceeded to look very innocent.

"_Hiccup? It's the middle of the day._"

"Yeah, I know, but what do you know about Electricsquirms?"

"_Electricsquirms? Why do you want to know?_"

"There's one in the teacher's lounge right now and-_-_ I think we need to get it out before the table collapses." Hiccup explained, ignoring the glares he got from some girls at the insinuation of their weight.

"_Hah, a bunch of the girls freak out?_" Stoic chuckled. "_Alright, the Electricsquirm isn't very dangerous, but it is fast. You have to catch it by the tail or it will shock you._"

"The tail doesn't drop off like a newt's, does it?" Hiccup questioned. That would be highly inconvenient.

"_No, it doesn't._" Stoic assured him. "J_ust don't let it anywhere near a socket or-_-"

There was a loud popping noise that made everyone on the table jump and darkness descended rather suddenly.

"Or it'll knock out the power?" Hiccup finished with a sigh, ignoring the onset of shuffling around and rising voices behind him. "You do realize that we're not gonna find it now, right?"

"_I think it glows a little. But don't worry. You took down a Frilled Whipspitter in the dark. The Electricsquirm should be nothing._" Stoic's tone was almost too flippant for his son's liking. "_Anything else I should know?_"

"Snotlout punched me in the face."

"_Did you punch him back?_"

Hiccup rolled his eyes. He would be lying if he said he hadn't expected **that** question to crop up. Stoic believed in the "an eye for an eye" philosophy. To get the person back just as good as they had gotten you.

"No, but I have the best black eye I've seen in years."

"_He was always able to throw a good punch._" Stoic commented.

The unspoken "And you couldn't swing an arm without overbalancing" lurked underneath that, but his father hadn't made comments to that effect in years and he wasn't going to start up again.

They said their quick farewells and Hiccup handed the phone back to Marie. She didn't put it away but held it above her head so the glow from the screen was shining across her face.

"We're gonna have to find this thing in the dark, aren't we." she said, scowling.

"I think they glow a little bit." Hiccup shrugged. A few more cell phones lit up the dark around them.

"You _think_ they glow a little bit, how helpful."

Hiccup decided to ignore her and turned in the general direction of the drum major. "Steiny, the door's closed right?"

"Should be, yeah." Steiny nodded.

"Alright," Hiccup rubbed his hands together. "Let's catch us a dragon."

* * *

-0-


	9. De-Nile and the Stupid Pit

**A/N:** This is still my favorite of the existing chapters. I think this was the chapter where I figured out what the hell was up with Marie and where she started to come together as a character. This was also the chapter where I learned that Marie and the twins have probably been really good friends for years. The previous chapters now reflect that.

On the whole, this chapter is virtually identical to its previous incarnation.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Nine: De-Nile and the Stupid Pit

* * *

It was sizzling hot outside and the unfortunate band members sweated under the burning sun. They cursed the heat and the sweat dripping into their eyes like angry little flies. The chalk was practically melting in their hands and their charts were adhering to their skin because of the sweat. Standing at attention on the hot blacktop wasn't helping matters.

Gobber hadn't called them to parade rest yet. He was busy examining the next few pages of charts and enjoying the occasional breath of wind that being up in the tower provided.

He hadn't noticed the death glares from the older members of the band.

Yet.

"I hope he's not thinking about giving us more closer charts." Hiccup muttered. It would be just like Gobber to do that. Give them the next set of closer charts when they had barely five minutes left in morning drill practice. He didn't care if they were through the entire ballad and had charted a decent chunk of the closer this morning; any more charts could wait until the next stretch of outdoor practice.

"He'd better let us go in soon." Marie grumbled from his left, shifting her weight from foot to foot in the most unobtrusive way possible. "The giant bruise on my ass isn't getting any smaller."

"It's not on your ass. It's on your leg." Hiccup corrected in a hiss, irritation washing through him. "And for the hundredth time, I'm sorry."

"Your bony knees are genetic, you can't help that." Marie shook her head briskly, chasing away a fly. "But you could use some work on your sense of spatial perception. Your knee almost had anal sex with my ass."

Hiccup's brain stalled out just trying to figure out how he was supposed to respond to comment like that or, indeed, if he was supposed to respond at all. Marie was exaggerating; the bruise was high enough on her leg that it was low on her butt-cheek, but it was by no means close enough to validate her comment.

Personally, Hiccup blamed his dad for yesterday's Electricsquirm Debacle, as it was being called now. Stoic had not been excruciatingly clear on just how fast an Electricsquirm really was in the right circumstances and just how hard they were to catch in the dark. The more daring members of the woodwinds had put themselves to good use, there had been a lot of yelling, and those who had participated in trying to capture the small, electric dragon only looked marginally less battered today in comparison to yesterday. Hiccup had not endeared himself to anyone because his plan for cornering the dragon had fallen on its face. Just to be clear, he had not seen the chair until he had tripped over it.

The bony knees were just something he couldn't help.

"Hah! Your knee almost got some!" Snotlout crowed quietly from his spot several steps behind Marie and to the side.

Hiccup grinned at his cousin. "Jealous?"

"You want a matching set?" Snotlout threatened, indicating the non-black eye.

"Hey, we're still at attention! Act like it!" reprimanded the nearest drum major and three seniors lapsed back into silence. Marie continued to fidget and make faces. Hiccup's knee had left a pretty sizeable bruise on her backside.

So they continued to stand at attention and sweat. Hiccup shifted his feet a little as well, just to make sure the soles of his shoes were not melting into the pavement. The black rubbery crack-sealant was a bit soft today and the twins had been stomping their shoes on the sealant every chance they had gotten just to see the tread-marks.

He looked up towards the Ruffnut and Tuffnut, the former halfway between the forty-five and the fifty, and the latter on the fifty. They were being remarkably still and patient, though he attributed that to the fact they were not standing next to each other and therefore could not insult one another out of the corner of their mouths. Fishlegs was off by the thirty-five close to the sideline and if Hiccup turned his head and leaned back a little, he could just see Astrid standing all the way out by her lonesome near the fifteen yard line. She looked about as miserable as Hiccup felt right now.

"Relax!" Gobber called out suddenly and there was a collective sigh of relief as the band all but collapsed into parade rest.

"Well, ye all did good this morning! That was a decent chunk of the closer! And the entire ballad yesterday! I think we could get the whole show charted b'fore the end of the week!" He gave them another one those grins that the band had long since associated with that of a sadistic man. "Who wants to get started on the next set of closer charts b'fore we go in?"

The death glares increased by a factor of ten and so did the groans. This time, Gobber did notice it.

"Alright, alright ye pansies." he relented. "I know better than to get between teenagers an' their next meal. Pack it in."

There was another relieved sigh and the poor teenagers promptly went to slumping all over the place, dropping most semblance of proper posture. They dragged themselves to the sideline with groans and grumbles about what part of their body hurt the most.

"Ashlyn, you got fourteen laps to run!" Hiccup shouted at his nimrod rookie before she could even think about making a dash for it. She had practically flown to the sideline to get her cooler, probably hoping to get out of running out of any laps today. "Steiny's watching!"

Acting like she was being repeatedly stabbed in the gut with a rusty jagged knife, Ashlyn dropped everything and started her third round of laps that week. She was being impossible on the whole 'taking orders from the veterans' business, but at least she would gain enough stamina to survive the season.

Things weren't going to clear up on their own like Hiccup had optimistically hoped for. It was time to talk to Gobber. It was also time to take Ashlyn aside and read her the riot act.

Before Hiccup could get his things, Astrid came wandering up and plopped her forehead solidly on his shoulder with a tired groan.

"Kill me..." she requested. "I didn't get any sleep last night. That damn Nadder shrieked its head off every time I tried to sleep. I chased it off twice but it came back and it didn't shut up until nearly four in the morning and I still couldn't get any sleep because the sun was coming up..."

"I think we're in a hatching cycle, meaning they're going to start looking for mates around this time." Hiccup informed her, making her groan at the thought. "They usually clutch around mid-winter."

"You mean that Nadder's prostituting itself right outside my window?" Astrid growled, anger sparking half-heartedly in her eyes.

"You don't have to say it like that, but... probably." Hiccup shrugged. He didn't exactly pay attention to dragon mating rituals. According to his dad, there was a lot of fire and crazy, low-to-the-ground stunt-flying involved. Not something a sane person stuck around to witness.

"I've got my RenFair ax. Next time that Nadder comes by and starts shrieking, I swear to the gods..." Astrid made several violent gestures with her hands that made Hiccup glad she wasn't holding anything long or pointy at the moment.

She did look like she had spent the night not sleeping and compensated for it with half a pot of coffee. That jittery, not-awake-but-not-exhausted, kept-upright-solely-by-caffeine-and-adrenaline-and -willpower appearance. She wore it unusually well and that was one of the things Hiccup really liked about her. Astrid could go through a windstorm and walk out looking like a million bucks. Even now, sweaty with straggling hair escaping her thick braid and hands colored blue by the chalk, she was still a dream.

"What are you smiling at?" Astrid asked, her mouth curving upwards in response to his smile.

"Air conditioning." Hiccup blurted out, hoping that strange tone in his voice wasn't fear.

"Oh." Astrid sounded disappointed and some of the sparkle in her eyes dimmed. "Yeah, it'll be good to get back inside."

She turned her back to him, grabbed her cooler and started across the grassy median. Hiccup suddenly felt very stupid. No, he was wallowing in stupidity. He had dug himself a nice stupid pit and was up to his elbows in stupid. He grabbed two handfuls of his hair and tried to yank it out, wishing there was a table nearby so he could bang his head on it.

"_Air conditioning_? Why the hell did I say that?" He couldn't believe his traitorous brain. "You don't say that to girls when they ask you what you're smiling about!" He smacked his forehead with the heels of his hands several times. "I am an idiot!"

"I won't argue that." Marie commented lightly as she passed him. "Even I'd walk away."

"Marie, you're supposed to support me."

"I do support you. You screw up and I tell you where it happened."

"Well, where did I screw it up this time?" Hiccup asked, shaking his head.

"The air-con reply didn't help, but you've kinda taken this as far as it can go, so five words for you." Marie held up the corresponding number of fingers. "Shut up and kiss her."

"That's not gonna help." Hiccup deadpanned.

"Yes it will." Marie shrugged. "Well, it'll help the rest of us when it comes to you making a fool out of yourself. The next time you make a fool out of yourself, we'll be able to look back and say 'at least he managed to bag that Astrid Hofferson chick'."

"And you get twenty-three bucks." Hiccup added, once more scowling over that bet.

"I need a new computer mouse. The touchpad on my laptop is driving me nuts." Marie admitted. She offered him a brief smile. "Don't rip your hair out over it."

Marie's "advice" left Hiccup feeling less reassured, as he should have suspected. As insightful as she could be at times, her advice on romance and crushes often fell rather short of the mark.

And more than once, Hiccup felt like he was too.

Some days he was Mister Smooth; doing most everything right and his jokes were actually funny. Other days, he said dumb things about air conditioning and splashed around in the stupid pit again.

Unfortunately, the days in the stupid pit just about outnumbered the days as Mister Smooth.

Sighing, Hiccup turned around to collect his stuff, only to find Snotlout, Fishlegs and the twins staring him down.

"What are you guys looking at?"

"I just wanna say that I'm really glad I'm not you. Like, _really_ glad." Tuffnut said. He had been holding his marching posture (straight spine, shoulders back, chin up) since leaving the field, but he dropped it over the course of the sentence until he was back in his customary slouch.

"At the rate you're going, your knee is gonna be the only part of you that will have ever gotten some." Snotlout stated with the air of one who had seen the future and didn't like what he had saw.

Hiccup threw up his hands in exasperation. "What is your obsession with me 'getting some'?" he asked. "Actually, what is your obsession with making sure I get together with Astrid?!"

"'Cause I don't wanna tell any future girlfriends that my loser cousin is sharing my apartment because he can't get a girlfriend." Snotlout replied, his tone screaming "duh, moron".

"I am not a loser!" Hiccup snapped as his (traitor!) friends walked past him.

"Yeah, but you're kind of skirting the edge of it. You'll fast-track your way into it at this rate." Ruffnut informed him, her voice so dry it could have caught fire.

"You people have no faith in me! Me and Astrid will be together before the end of the year!" Hiccup shouted, shaking his fists at their backsides in a way that he hoped made him look defiant and menacing, and not like a plucked shrubbery waving in the breeze. "And I'll totally have my own apartment!"

He dropped his arms and slumped, covering his face with his hands and still feeling vastly stupid. He could have told Astrid how pretty she looked even though she was strung out on coffee and no sleep, but nooo! He had to blurt out something about air conditioning!

_I blame this on having little to no positive feminine influence in my life._ Hiccup decided, ignoring the giggling and sniggering from his fellow band-mates. _Grandma's half insane and Aunt Aggie never really twigged to the fact I'm a guy. Mrs. Overland is nice, but her brain is addled somehow, 'cause no one can be that cheerful all the time. And then with Marie and Ruffnut, they're all crazy..._

He grabbed his things and headed for the door.

* * *

His egg-salad sandwich looked very unappetizing.

Hiccup normally liked egg salad. He didn't have it very often because Stoic didn't make lists when he did the shopping; he just grabbed whatever happened to catch his eye and could decently replace a home-cooked meal. So when eggs did come home, Hiccup tried to do something with them before they went bad.

But today, the egg salad just looked like a pile of yellow-ish maggots in eating something fuzzy and rotten in a trashcan. Making a face, he wrapped the sandwich back up and tossed it back into the cooler. Maybe it would look a little more like food once he got home.

His pudding still looked like something edible.

It was Wednesday and general fatigue over the last two days had caught up to the band members. Hiccup hadn't heard one bad joke, crack about bodily functions or shouted color name in the last fifteen minutes. The twins were considerably less boisterous and Snotlout hadn't even tried to start an argument with Marie; both seeming content to just mind their own business. Fishlegs was buried in the _Dragon Manual Vol. 2_. Marie's parents had placed an order for two sets rather than one and she was trying to somehow remove the extra copies from her house.

Hiccup had been trying not to look at Astrid all during lunch and he was pretty sure she was doing the same, because she had pushed her cooler between them rather than sit next to him. She was also sitting at an angle. He felt spurned.

_I never should have even opened my mouth. Air conditioning... Stupid, stupid!_

"Aaah! Dammit." Marie had acquired a half-empty bottle and stain of red Gatorade on her clothes, now spreading down her shirt and soaking into her shorts with startling speed. "I'll be right back." She grabbed her backpack, stood up and headed for the doors.

Astrid watched her walk past with a thoughtful look on her face.

"I'll be right back too." she announced and got up to follow.

"Me too!" Ruffnut leapt on the social cue, literally and figuratively, and trailed after both blonde girls.

"Anyone think it's weird how girls just go to the bathroom in packs?" Fishlegs wondered when they were out of earshot. "Like, one gets up and they all just have to follow? What kind of psychology is behind that?"

Snotlout waved a hand dismissively. "They probably off to verbally abuse Hiccup while he can't hear them."

"What?" Hiccup shot a glare at his cousin.

"Hey, you totally screwed up with Astrid earlier, so they're off to defile your good name and drag it through the crapper." Tuffnut put in knowledgeably. He knew this stuff. He'd shared a room with his sister for six years. "It's what girls do."

"That's not what Astrid does." Hiccup said, both in defense of the colorguard captain and himself.

"Yeah right. But I guarantee they're talking about guys in there." Snotlout said firmly. He turned to Hiccup. "If your name turns up in the conversation, I'll give you my carrot sticks."

"Give me that Swiss cake roll instead and I might consider it a deal." Hiccup haggled.

Snotlout hoarded his Swiss cake roll jealously. "Not unless you can talk my mom out of her health food kick!"

"You know that'll never happen. It's an unfair bet." Hiccup pointed out. "Chocolate or nothing!"

"Okay, okay, I'll buy you something from the mini-mart." Snotlout conceded, though he had no idea why he had at all, seeing as he wasn't getting anything out of this other than the satisfaction that the girls were probably bashing his cousin's name.

When they sat in silence for a moment longer, Tuffnut spoke up.

"So are we spying on them or what?"

* * *

Marie wasn't sure why Astrid accompanying her into the bathroom, but she bet it had something to do with Hiccup's epic flub earlier. On the other hand, she hadn't the slightest clue why Ruffnut was tagging along behind them.

Not that she was about to complain. Between the two of them, it would be easier to get Astrid to talk.

Ruffnut must have been experiencing similar thoughts, because the moment the trio exited through the orange doors, they both reached out to grab Astrid by the arms and haul her bodily into the girls' restroom.

"Hey, what-" Astrid started to protest, but the other two blondes were already hustling her through the swinging door.

Astrid slipped a little on the tiled floor, abruptly wishing that she had not taken off her shoes at the start of lunch (even if it felt _sooo good_ not to have her shoes on). She didn't resist much when Marie and Ruffnut pushed her back into the wall of sinks and promptly boxed her in.

"Alright Astrid, spill it." Ruffnut commanded.

"What?" The colorguard captain found herself trying to further the distance between herself and the two girls as much as she could.

"Hiccup flubbed and now you want to talk about it, right?" Marie questioned. "No one pees much during band camp, so you followed me to the bathroom for another reason."

Astrid hesitated before nodding, a tiny gesture. Marie had gotten oddly intimidating in the last couple of minutes and it wasn't the usual "psycho-crazy, but otherwise mostly harmless" intimidating that she normally exuded. This was more like "gun to your forehead, so speak goddammit" sort of intimidating. It was not helped by the stain of red Gatorade, which her yellow shirt made look more like blood than spilled sports drink.

And Ruffnut, who looked frighteningly like she might bounce the colorguard captain's head off a sink if Astrid didn't comply.

"Seriously, do you guys have to look like vultures and me as road kill?" Astrid wondered. She was unnerved a little bit, but she decided to hide it under sarcasm. Eighteen year old colorguard captains who dealt with sore arm muscles, bruises and snot-nosed rookies on a regular basis did not get unnerved.

And if Ruffnut and Marie thought they were getting under her skin about Hiccup just because she was low on sleep... Well, they had another thing coming!

Marie shrugged, hefted her bag and shut herself in on the stalls. Ruffnut slid up in her place and loomed over Astrid with big, wide eyes.

"Can you see the pyramids?" she questioned.

"What?" Astrid blinked.

"Is there a bright blue sky overhead? Is there sand everywhere? Mud? Reeds? Crocs?" Ruffnut grabbed her by the shoulders and started to shake her. "Wake up and smell the hippo poop, Astrid! You're standing knee-deep in denial!"

"I am not in denial!" Astrid shoved the other girl back just enough to reassert the boundaries of her personal space. Sniggering came from the locked bathroom stall. "And you shut up!"

"Well, then you've gotta be PMSing. Marie's stuff for that-_-_"

"I am not PMSing!"

"Ten to one says you are." Marie put in, the scowl all but audible in her voice. "By the end of the week, we're gonna be knee-deep in sharks. Big-ass great whites with rows of teeth. Big teeth." She made a disgruntled noise. "Damn McClintock effect."

"That hasn't been proven."

"Your uterus might disagree with you."

"I'm not in denial and I'm not PMSing." Astrid said firmly, crossing her arms.

"Soo... That leaves us with you walking in here because you wanted to bash Hiccup's name in private." Ruffnut deduced, starting up a slow pace back and forth in front of the colorguard captain.

"I'm not going to bash Hiccup's name. I don't do that to people." Astrid shook her head, but she wasn't surprised Ruffnut would think of something like that. She **did** want to talk, but this wasn't how she picture the conversation getting started.

"Then what **are** you gonna do?" Ruffnut asked, trying not to look like she had really, _really_ been hoping to drag Hiccup's name through the mud.

"Astrid, are you _seriously_ gonna deny us -_-_ three teenage girls who make it their business to gossip -_-_ the chance to mock the idiot you jilted you?" Marie wondered from the inside of the stall.

"Hiccup did not jilt me!" Astrid said in defense of the auburn-haired teen.

"He sure did something." Ruffnut pointed out, crossing her arms. "One word about air conditioners and you were stomping away like he gave you underwear for Christmas."

"I was not stomping!"

Ruffnut clucked her tongue disapprovingly and shared an exasperated look with the closed stall door. No doubt Marie was wearing a similar expression on the other side. Astrid's frown deepened considerably. This entire thing felt a little too choreographed to be completely spur of the moment. Which meant a couple of things, but one thing most of all.

They were in cahoots.

If Marie could think up a suicidal plan, Ruffnut would be crazy enough to go along with it. And if Ruffnut could think up a suicidal plan, Marie would be crazy enough to go along with it.

There could be nothing more terrifying when these two loopy nutcases conspired.

And they were clearly out to get Astrid.

"Look, whatever you guys are thinking, I can guarantee that it's the exact opposite." Astrid assured them, though she was not one hundred percent sure of that herself. "Hiccup and I-_-_ We're just good friends."

Marie laughed derisively.

"Hippo poop, Astrid." Ruffnut repeated, her arms still crossed and a frustrated scowl played across her lips. "Do you smell it or not?"

"I don't know why you guys are making such a big deal out of this." Astrid forced a laugh into her voice to show that she didn't think this a big deal at all. "I've known Hiccup since kindergarten. I mean, we've known each other a long time, so of course I like him or else I still wouldn't be friends with him."

Marie sighed heavily, like the colorguard captain was completely missing the point. "Astrid, maybe you could stop being a stubborn bitch for ten seconds-_-_ Holy hell... Where did these things come from?"

"What is it? What did you find?" Astrid wondered, almost glad for the deviation.

Marie didn't reply for a moment, but they could hear cloth rustling faintly. Then: "My boobs."

Ruffnut broke out into sniggers almost instantly.

"Seriously? How did you lose them?"

"Shut up!" Marie snapped, but she was starting to laugh. "C'mon guys, I wasn't exactly well-endowed last year and all of a sudden... poof. How did I not notice a couple of extra inches? Seriously, remind me to go buy new bras this weekend."

"Go buy new bras this weekend." Astrid said in a dull voice.

"I didn't mean _now_." Marie scowled and let out another sigh. "Look Miss Funny-pants, what I was trying to say earlier was that if you could stop being a stubborn bitch for ten seconds and actually _look_ at Hiccup when he talks to you, you're gonna notice a few things."

It was Astrid's turn to scowl. "Like what?"

Marie took the opportunity to come out of the stall to the sound of a flushing toilet, now divested of her soiled clothes and wearing clean ones. She didn't immediately answer Astrid's question, set her bag by one of the sinks, and ripped a sheet of brown towel off the dispenser. Folding it in half, she covered up the sink's drain and turned the water on, filling up the basin.

"Astrid, every time he feels like he screws up with you, do you know who he talks to?" Marie pointed a finger at herself. "Me. He comes to me and asks where he went wrong." She turned the water off and dunked the stained part of her yellow shirt into the sink. Red immediately began to seep from it.

"He does?" Astrid straightened slightly.

In retrospect, she supposed that the news should not have been too much of a surprise. Hiccup didn't have too many people to go to if he needed to talk, especially when it came to things like his feelings (men didn't talk about those with other men). Marie must represent a good neutral party, to him.

"Oh, you bet he does." Ruffnut said, nodding. "Saw him do it five times in two hours."

"Freshman year. Before the Hardwood Homecoming." Marie added for clarification.

Astrid nodded in remembrance. Hiccup had run up to her five times for two hours, tripped over his words four times and ran off. The fifth time, he had successfully asked if she'd like to accompany him to the Homecoming dance after the game.

If Hiccup went to Marie each time he felt that he had screwed up, then that meant those four times he had stumbled on his words and run off, he had gone straight back to Marie for advice.

"Astrid, you know that smile he had right before he blurted something about air conditioners?" the clarinetist inquired. "That was the stupid smile he gets whenever he thinks about you." She squeezed the water out of the soiled yellow shirt. Most of the red had already faded and was floating around in the sink. "And I know it sounds creepy, but he keeps a little secret sketchbook and doodles pictures of you in it when he supposed to be taking notes. Trust me, I've seen it."

Astrid turned a brilliant red and Ruffnut leered rather smugly. No wonder Hiccup considered Marie a safely neutral party. Ruffnut wouldn't have kept something like that secret for five seconds. Frankly, Astrid couldn't believe that Hiccup doodled pictures of her. It **was** creepy, from a casual angle, but somehow, it came across her mind as sweet.

But she couldn't figure out where everyone was getting the idea that they **liked** each other. As in 'more than a platonic manner'. Nothing had stood out in Hiccup's body language. He was a good kid; even-tempered and well-adjusted despite his less-than stellar history with his father. He laughed and smiled and teased her and took her punches in stride, but the relationship didn't feel like anything special. Just a normal, if close, friendship.

"He doesn't like me like _that_." Astrid said, though more to herself.

"How do you know?" Ruffnut asked, poking her in the shoulder. "I think Marie just threw enough evidence at you to prove otherwise."

"We're just friends." Astrid repeated emphatically, batting the trumpeter's hand away. "You're reading way too far into this."

In order to deter further questioning/conversation (because she didn't want to talk about it anymore), the colorguard captain quickly extracted herself out of the gap between the two sinks and brushed past Ruffnut and headed out the door.

"What are you doing out here?!" she shouted, causing four familiar boys to scarper for the safety of the men's restroom.

The door eased shut, muffling Astrid's stomping footsteps.

"Poor Hiccup," Marie sighed a little dramatically. "If he's not crushed already..."

"I don't think she's smelling hippo poop." Ruffnut commented thoughtfully.

"We gotta do something before I lose that bet."

"I'd help, but..."

"I'll throw in a Hershey's bar for you, if I win."

"Deal."

They shook on it.

Operation: Get Hiccup and Astrid to Shut Up And Kiss was officially on.

* * *

-0-


	10. Small, but Fierce

**VERY IMPORTANT NOTE. PLEASE READ:** I've been under a rock for a while, but I spent that time refurbishing this story and cleaning up the chapters and such. For all intents and purposes, this is a brand-new chapter within the context of the story. As in: It's never been seen before. It fucking brand-new, bitches. All preceding chapters have been polished and uploaded. The originally planned chapter ten will appear as chapter eleven. I highly suggest you go back to the beginning and give this story another read-through before you come back to this new chapter.

But yes! I'm back! For now. I'm a little stuck on chapter 14 because I'm writing characters I've never written before and there really isn't a good existing precedent for their interactions.

The last half of this chapter was a little therapeutic to write. It's what I wish **my** section leader had done about Ashlyn, but the silly girl didn't even know there was a problem.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Ten: Small But Fierce

* * *

Another band camp "tradition" that was still holding firm was naptime. Basically, it was exactly what it sounded like; a half-hour of quiet time in between sectionals and full band rehearsal. Not all of the kids took advantage of the half-hour, but they were still encouraged to keep it down for the sake of the kids who could actually nap on command.

When the lights went out across the band suite except for the back hallway, Hiccup stepped over the kids who had decided to sprawl out in ungainly positions and take up as much room as possible, and got out of the band suite and up the stairs to Gobber's office. The door was partially open and he knocked on it before poking his head in.

"Ah Hiccup, nicer shiner." Gobber said almost admiringly, flashing the teen a grin. "Missed seein' that. Where'd ye get it?"

"Snotlout punched me."

"Did ye punch him back?"

Hiccup scowled. "Y'know, you're the fourth person since yesterday to ask me that." he said. "Am I somehow the school's walking soap opera or something? Is my life more interesting than everyone else's and they're all trying to live vicariously through me? Everyone wants to know if I punched my cousin back. And _everyone_ wants to know what's going to happen between me and Astrid-_-_"

"What _is_ goin' to happen between you and Astrid?" Gobber inquired. He dodged the fierce glare. "Alright, don' look at me like that." The former dragon hunter waved a hand. "Ye need somethin' or did ye just come to be sociable? I don't see much of ye anymore."

"You see me just about every day as it is." Hiccup pointed out. Gobber had a standing invite for dinner with the Haddocks and was over every time his schedule was clear. That is, nearly every night since he didn't have the paper-grading responsibilities of other teachers.

"That's not my point. Yer getting older an' I'm seein' less of ye." Gobber reiterated. He gave a theatrical sniffle. "Then, one day, yer gonna look back an' wonder why ye didn't spend any more time with yer dear Uncle Gobber..."

Hiccup closed his eyes briefly in exasperation. Gobber was less of an uncle-figure and more of the mentor-figure that Hiccup hadn't actually asked for, but had gotten anyways. Still a confidant when he had wanted to talk to an adult, but didn't feel like he could go to his father. Sometimes, Gobber produced gems of wisdom, but most times, you wondered why you have gone to him for advice in the first place.

"I need to talk to you about one of my rookies. Ashlyn What's-her-face." Hiccup replied, silently berating himself for forgetting the last name.

"The one ye got out there runnin' laps? Probably shouldn't have her out there doin' that, with this heat." Gobber said in a slightly admonishing tone. "Ye make any headway on resolvin' the little problem between her an' Marie?"

"That's just it. I don't know what's going on. I don't even know where to start. There's no point in talking to Marie; she doesn't know what the hell is going on either." Hiccup said. "And Ashlyn barely listens on the good days, so I'm afraid she'll just blow off anything I say. I don't know what to do with her and I'm starting to want her gone."

"Hiccup, ye know I don't like kicking people outta this band." Gobber said, a touch sternly. "I don' agree with ye that she's a bad player. If she was bad, I wouldn't have let her into this band in the first place. She signed up. She wants to be here."

"Well, she's not acting like she does. If she wants to be here, she'd cooperate and listen to people and actually _try_. She's not making effort, Gobber." Hiccup grumbled. "And that is actually the _only_ problem Marie has with her. I think the rest of it's in Ashlyn's head. I think Ashlyn is the one doing all the hating. I mean, the two don't even socialize enough to start breeding contempt." Hiccup explained.

"Maybe that's the problem." Gobber suggested with a brightening expression.

"No, we cannot lock them in a practice room and expect they'll come out best friends. Absolutely not. That'll just make it worse."

"Eh, it worked for me an' yer dad."

"Yeah... Gobber, my dad's first words to you were: 'That's my girlfriend yer starin' at, ya one-legged lout!'" Hiccup affected his father's cultivated Scottish accent, even though Stoic hadn't had the accent back in college. "And then you sort of -_-_ punched each other until you decided not to hate each other."

"And here we are today." Gobber spread his arms in a 'ta-da!' gesture.

Hiccup blinked. "If I shut them in a practice room together and make them talk it out, Ashlyn won't come out alive. She's an idiot." he deadpanned.

"Then work around that. If she's as much an idiot as yer suggestin', lay it out for her in simple terms." Gobber said. "I know yer new at this, but ye gotta take charge and sometimes, takin' charge means gettin' tough. And by gettin' tough, I mean-_-_"

"I can guess." Hiccup interrupted. The band director's former career had infiltrated his current one more than it should have been allowed to. "Gobber, I'm not going to scare her into submission. I don't do the respect-through-fear thing."

"I know, but if ye want to get her to start listenin' to ye, ye need to stop all-_-_ _this_ first," Gobber made a encompassing gesture that caused Hiccup to roll his eyes. "An' let her know that ye aren't playin' around. Think like Marie."

"No one can think like Marie."

"Give it a try, Hiccup. Yer section leader now. Ye give it yer best shot an' a half b'fore ye come back to me, got it?"

"I don't do respect through fear-_-_"

"Hiccup..."

"Okay, okay. Big scary senior section leader. I'll give it a shot." he said reluctantly, waving his hands. "But I can't make any promises it'll work!"

He left the office with Gobber beaming in approval. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and huffed out a sigh. It was packed with exasperation and frustration and a few other '-ations' he couldn't readily identify. That feeling had come on him again; the one that had him think he had done something horrendous in a past life and karma had come back around to bite him. He wasn't a confrontational person; just assertive enough to keep people from thinking they could take advantage of him. But he was surrounded by people who considered violence an acceptable method of getting things done.

"Hey, what's with the frowny face?"

Hiccup jumped, stumbling back against the bottom step. Astrid was standing _right there_. He would have walked right into her if she hadn't spoken up.

"What frowny face?" he asked, going on the defensive.

"The one you have right here." Astrid poked a finger to his forehead. "You look sarcastic whenever you frown, but the real emotion shows up here."

"So I emote with my forehead. Are you gonna make a big deal out of it?" Hiccup waved her hand down and tried to scoot past her, but she blocked his way. "Okay, what? This isn't about what happened before lunch, was it? I thought you were mad at me."

"First of all, I'm not mad, I'm _annoyed_." Astrid corrected. She raised a hand sharply when Hiccup inhaled to speak. "Secondly, it's not you I'm annoyed at. I'm annoyed at a certain pair of little schemers who have just enough brain cells between the two of them to really be trouble."

Hiccup made another move to speak, but the colorguard captain covered his mouth with the palm of her hand, making him turn pink around the edges and lose the will to interrupt.

"Thirdly, I don't know how much you overheard in the bathroom and Marie might have mentioned some thing you really didn't want me knowing," She had to squash a smile at Hiccup's _'aw man, now I'm really dead'_ expression. "But I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. We've been friends for years, Hiccup. This has weathered hormones and puberty and everything else. I like what we have and I don't want to lose it over the silly things that we can just as easily talk out."

_Talk? You don't do talk. You do punch and shout! Who are you and what have you done with Astrid?! _Hiccup wailed in his head, since his mouth was still covered. _Crap, how far back into the friendzone did she shove me?..._

"Now," Astrid withdrew her hand and poked his forehead again. "You're making a mopey face like someone walked off with your Christmas candy and I'm having a hard time ignoring that. What's going on?"

"Nothing, just reflecting on the fact that Marie was on the right track with one thing." Hiccup complained. "I haven't really been a section leader the past three years because there's only been two of us and now I've got this rookie who's too stupid to listen-"

"Hiccup," Astrid laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "If there's one thing I know, it's that the people who join band are here because they really want to be."

"You're giving Ashlyn _wa-a-ay_ too much credit-_-_"

"And you know something else? You are a really good leader."

"When I'm not tripping over my own feet, you mean?" Hiccup drawled.

The blonde punched him in the arm so hard he staggered.

"Ow!"

"Don't sell yourself short!" Astrid barked, drawing herself up imposingly. "I mean it, Hiccup. You've got all the qualities of a natural-born leader. You just don't exercise them enough."

Hiccup rubbed his twinging arm. "Why do you keep punching me if I say anything remotely self-deprecating? Isn't it the mark of a humble, non-arrogant person to be able to point out their own flaws and accept them?" he questioned.

"You point out the labels that everyone's tried to pin on you since first grade." Astried said, her hands on her hips.

"First grade wasn't a great time for me, especially the first half-_-_" Hiccup tried to say.

"But nothing. Your first grade class was full of morons and you knew it!" Astrid snapped. Hiccup definitely wasn't the most popular or well-liked person in their class, and while most of the playground bullies had grown out of their hair-pulling, line-cutting ways, they still weren't above the infrequent taunt about one's social status (or perceived lack thereof). The auburn-haired sixteen-year old was still a favorite target even ten years later.

"But you know something amazing? You're better than them. You've always have been and I believe you need to start showing it."

Hiccup looked at her incredulously. "So you **want** me to turn into Snotlout instead and boast about doing impossible feats with my face?"

"If you go that far, I'll kill you." Astrid promised flatly.

Hiccup shivered. Ah, there was the shouty, punchy Astrid he knew so well.

"But I have every confidence that you'll know how to deal with Ashlyn." Astrid went on, much less menacing. "So don't stress over it."

For a second, it looked like she was going to lob another punch at his shoulder, but given that he was still huddled over from the previous one, she decided against it. Instead, she smiled and waved, then went off to actually try and get some sleep.

_Mood swing... Must be shark week 'round here._ Hiccup groaned to himself.

Rotating his shoulder a few times, he let himself back into the band suite. He stepped over a few sprawled band-mates and into the lit back hall where Marie was bent over her notebook.

"Hey," Hiccup started, tapping her shoulder. "What are the odds I'm suffering karmic backlash for something I did in a past life?"

The scratching pen came to an abrupt halt, the tip actually veering off its intended path to draw a short line down the page. Marie looked up very quickly, blue eyes widening.

"Unlikely why do you ask?" she inquired, the words nearly running together she said them so fast.

"No reason, it just feels that way." Hiccup replied, scratching the back of his head. "Also, I'm going to talk to Ashlyn and I'm supposed to put the fear of god in her. How do you usually go about doing that?"

"Wow, you never come to me for advice about that." Marie commented in an amazed tone.

"Yeah well, that's where talking to Gobber got me." Hiccup explained. "So? Hit me with something."

Marie thought for a moment. "Okay, body language is important. You need to be the Alpha Asshole. Your best imitation of Snotlout should suffice. Ashlyn's an idiot, but she's got survival instincts. And try to ignore the fact she's got two inches and twenty-some pounds on you."

"It's more like thirty." Hiccup muttered. "Okay, so I do the dominance thing and then..."

"Threaten her. Mean every word. Do it with a smile."

She ended with the half-crazed slasher smile that usually sent people away in a cold sweat. Even though she wasn't trying anything, Hiccup still walked away with a chill trailing cold fingers down his spine. The sight of it alone... dear gods...

_So my best impression of Snotlout..._

Hiccup took a moment to think about the way his cousin presented himself. Snotlout typically somewhat aggressive in his everyday interactions; a natural-born bully, truth be told (thank goodness that had been curbed to something fairly manageable). All of his body language was confrontational and forward and personal-space-invading. He was a presence that could fill up a small room.

_You know something about having a presence. Your judge from Solo-and-Ensemble told you that you had a good stage presence._ He reminded himself, making his way to the front of the band suite. _Hmm, maybe... Yeah, think Astrid. Small, but fierce._

Ashlyn was in the front hall, talking in whispers to her friends. It was nearly pitch black up here and Hiccup had to step much more carefully. He trod on a few fingers and didn't lift his feet high enough some times, but he made his way over to his last-chair rookie with no real casualties.

"Ashlyn! Hey!" he hissed. "I need to talk to you."

He couldn't see her face in the dark, but he heard the frown clearly in her voice.

"Right now?"

"Yes, right now. C'mon." Hiccup said, letting a little bit of impatience into his voice.

He picked his way back out of the darkness with a little more grace. Ashlyn followed him upstairs and he showed her in to one of the practice rooms. Ashlyn looked back at him with this amiable sort of expression, like she was happy to play nice and say what he wanted to hear. In an instant, Hiccup felt something inside him snap into place and he shut the door of the practice room a little harder than necessary.

"Alright, we're going to talk. Actually, I'm going to talk and you're going to listen." he said, crossing his arms. He stood with his legs apart, but otherwise drew himself up in his marching posture for the best effect. It was designed to be assertive and commanding, after all. "Ashlyn, do you want to be in this band?"

"Yeah." Ashlyn said. _Duh._ She was thinking.

"Then why aren't you acting like it? Why aren't you listening to the veterans?" Hiccup inquired. "Especially the seniors. It's not like we don't know what the hell we're talking about; we've been in band for four years.

"Look, I've tried to be reasonable and cut you some slack on the account of you being a rookie, but I was thinking in terms of inches. You took miles. Sectionals are not optional, advice is not be tossed aside, veterans are not to be ignored, and whatever beef you have with Marie, _don't bring it onto the field_!"

He surprised himself when his voice rose into a shout that echoed sharply off the walls of the small practice room, but Ashlyn was even more surprised. She jumped back and hit the wall, her eyes wide and the blood draining out of her cheeks. A tint of fear overtook her expression. Survival instincts indeed. She was listening now.

"I don't know what she said or did that you took so personally, but Marie didn't intend for you to take it personally. She's not out to get you. Her only problem with you is your lazy-ass approach to band and you can clear that up if you buckle down and do what's expected of you." Hiccup went on. "Now I don't care what you do on your down-time. That's your time. Hell, I don't even care if you don't come back for the next season, but you're in **this** season and you're here to stay. So when we're out there in practice and sectionals and competition, the only thing that matters on the field is the show. That _problem_? It doesn't exist."

Ashlyn visibly shrank away from him. Her expression said that all she wanted to do was sink through the wall and disappear, but alas, the wall remained stubbornly solid.

"If you want to be a part of this band, you will give it your all. By 'your all', I mean drenched in sweat and gasping for air. Aching muscles and lips so sore they feel like they're going to fall off. If you don't feel like you've been put under a steamroller by the end of the night, then you're not giving it your all."

"I have asthma." Ashlyn said in a small voice.

"So do five other people here, but that's not stopping them. Keep your inhaler in your pocket." Hiccup pointed out. "Ashlyn, you're done screwing around. You're in my section and I'm the dictator. Your freedom ends when practice begins. Sectionals are mandatory short of ill health and family emergencies. I will make exceptions, but not often. If you cannot make it to a practice, I have your phone number and I will find out why. Is that clear?"

Sullen, but defeated, Ashlyn nodded.

"Good." Hiccup grinned, trying his best to imitate Marie's slasher smile. "I'm glad we had this talk. Because the dragons, you know... They're suckers for perfection and man, you haven't seen Hookfang flame 'til he gets angry."

He succeeded in turning the last-chair rookie a pasty white. Hookfang was boisterous and vocal (sort of like Snotlout) and tended to be one of the loudest draconian voices on the sidelines. (The dragons didn't actually care when the band did poorly, but it wasn't like Ashlyn knew that.)

Feeling tall and empowered and in charge, Hiccup let himself out of the practice room. He was feeling better now that he had made himself unerringly clear. He still didn't like the respect-through-fear approach, but he couldn't deny the result. Ashlyn had actually listened to and absorbed what he'd said. She would probably get some of her bluster back by tomorrow, but her ego had been cut down and it wouldn't be growing back any time soon.

_Not quite the Alpha Asshole... _Hiccup considered, smiling slightly. _But it worked. That was all I needed._

* * *

-0-


	11. Small Victories

**A/N:** Alright, this is the last of the pre-existing chapters. It's mostly the last half of the chapter that underwent the biggest changes.

And let's just say a certain multi-fandom crossover got its claws into me a while ago.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Eleven: Small Victories

* * *

It was Thursday evening and it was time to concentrate.

Their drill and music instructors were going to evaluate their performances and gauge what improvements needed to be made. There were parents on the sidelines, here to get a sneak peek at what their children were doing, even though the official sneak peek wasn't until tomorrow.

But they were watching, nonetheless. This wasn't just a practice. This was a _performance_. And she was going to perform. She always performed. She could do no less. And she was in the zone tonight. She was movement. She was agility and dexterity. She was the flag, the whirling colors of silk in the dark. She-_-_ Oh look, it was Mr. Haddock-_-_

Astrid wasn't watching when the flag twirled down. Instead landing in her hands like it should have, it bounced off her skull.

Just like that, stars were shooting through her vision and several baritones were tripping over her when she didn't move when she was supposed to, going down abruptly with surprised yells. She only vaguely heard the marching techs and just about every adult on the sideline shouting for a halt to the proceedings, too busy clutching her throbbing head and trying to keep her brain from oozing out of her skull.

That wasn't how she intended to "be the flag".

Groaning miserably, Astrid rolled into a crouched position, pulling a hand away from her head to see if she was bleeding. There were enough people hovering over her that she was cast into shadow, but there were no suspicious stains on her fingers.

"Astrid!" Bri the colorguard instructor was practically on top of her before she knew it; dragging her to her feet and prodding the top of her head for any damage.

"I'm fine, Bri. My head just hurts." Astrid reassured her through a small grimace. The poking fingers made it hurt more.

"Sit down, we'll get you some ice." Bri hustled her off to the sidelines while Gobber shouted about a ten-minute break. The botched set broke apart and streamed to the edge of the field.

Astrid allowed the colorguard instructor to lead her over to the tower and sit her down on the wooden steps behind the drum major's stand. Once her charge was seated, Bri went off to relieve someone of a handful or two of ice. Astrid put her head between her knees and allowed herself another groan.

"You okay, Astrid?" Steiny inquired with a half-smile from the stand, leaning over the safety rail.

"Yeah." Astrid gently rubbed her head and smiled back reassuringly. "My head's harder than it looks."

"That's 'cause you're a thick-skulled wench." came a certain voice that Astrid was starting to dislike. "Move your hand."

Astrid did and a wonderfully numbing plastic baggie full of ice came to rest gently on the crown of her skull. Marie and her miraculous bag of holding had come to the rescue again.

"That ice didn't come from your cooler, did it?" Astrid wondered.

"Don't wuss about it." Marie delicately arranged the cloth-wrapped plastic bag on Astrid's head so it was covering more of the impact site. "It didn't break skin."

Astrid shrugged in acquiescence. No one had ever said just how dangerous the flag poles could be. It was imperative for any colorguard member to keep their heads up and their eyes on whatever they were tossing into the air.

She would have liked to say that she had gotten through her entire band career without getting whacked on the head due to her own negligence. But that was like saying Hiccup would get through a full season without once tripping over his feet. It just didn't happen.

And speaking of Hiccup...

Her gaze was inexplicably drawn down the sidelines where the focus of her thoughts was having a-_-_ lively conversation with his father. There appeared to be some hand-waving involved and it looked like Stoic was trying to dodge questions.

Astrid snickered at the sight. Hiccup wasn't very big; he was one of the shortest, scrawniest boys she had ever known. She tended to forget about that fact until someone put him up against his father. Stoic was over seven feet tall and built like a mountain, and he was as immovable as one too. He could (and sometimes did) easily scoop his son up with just one arm and carry him like a sack of potatoes.

"Hey Astrid!" Ruffnut was lurking just around the corner of the tower with a big smile on her face. "You should totally go over there." she said, pointing to where Hiccup was.

"No!" Astrid hissed back.

"But I want you to."

"I'm not going over there just because you want me to!"

"Okay. Then you should totally go over there because **you** want to!"

"I **don't** want to!"

Ruffnut shrugged. "Okay." And walked away.

Now Astrid felt something distinctly ominous settle over her. Ruffnut _never_ gave up that easily. She was persistent and impatient and if she really wanted you do to something, she wanted you to do it right that second and not a minute later. She didn't just shrug and walk away. But then...

_Marie._

Astrid's blue eyes zeroed in on the Dark OverLord who must have been discussing evil plans with her circle of minions. A circle that had now grown to include Ruffnut on a more permanent basis.

_C'mon Ruff, she's evil! You know it!_ Astrid wished she was telepathic. _I know you're a complete loon, but just because Marie's the queen of loons doesn't mean you have to be under her thrall! Why are you against me?!_

The Queen of Loons must have possessed a fairly strong thrall if Astrid's attempts at telepathy were failing.

It was a miserable attempt anyways. The knock to her head wasn't helping either. The colorguard captain heaved a sigh and took the ice pack off her head, gently prodding the lump to see how bad it was. The flags were fairly lightweight, so she didn't anticipate any lasting damage. But it was going to smart for a couple of days.

A nearby commotion made her raise her head. Ruffnut was coming back and she was dragging a protesting Hiccup with her. With fussing, the twin shoved Hiccup down onto the wooden step so he was sitting next to Astrid.

"Sit tight!" Ruffnut warbled and it just sounded _wrong_ because Ruffnut didn't do anything that remotely resembled _warbling_. "There's plenty of break time left!"

Hiccup and Astrid exchanged a slightly frightened look each as the blonde twin sashayed off with the smuggest damn smirk in the history of smirks all over her face. They didn't have much choice but to comply with her wishes and sit here until break was over, because if either of them tried to walk away, they would just get shoved right back towards each other.

An awkward minute of silence passed during which Astrid was more than content to watch three Terrible Terrors flutter down onto the field. The three cat-sized dragons sniffed around briefly before dropping onto their bellies and scooting across the still-hot pavement.

"The yellow-green and the green-red are from the last hatching cycle. The mostly green is their mother." Hiccup observed, inadvertently startling Astrid. He suddenly grinned at her. "Want to see something cool?"

He licked his lips and whistled a short tune that ricocheted sharply up and down the octaves. It had the three Terrors raising their heads curiously, eyes alight and focused on Hiccup. Then they dashed over and threw themselves down at his feet. It would have been a show of supplication if he hadn't reached down and started scratching chins and necks, eliciting happy purrs from the little dragons.

Astrid blinked in surprise and then grinned.

"Hiccup Haddock. Dragon Whisperer." she commented wryly.

"Nah, just know my way around dragons." Hiccup corrected.

"Well, you certainly know your way around dragons better than anyone else." Astrid reminded him. "You're clearly crazy enough to give belly rubs to Terrible Terrors." she added pointedly.

"They let me." Hiccup said with only a vaguely defensive note. The Terror he was currently spoiling with a belly rub let out a whining growl when his hand stopped and he quickly resumed. "They're the only dragons that don't immediately spook around people." he added pointedly.

That was true. Humanity was pretty much the dragons only natural enemy and vice versa. The two species had clashed more than a couple of times and it always ended bloody. Humans had nearly hunted the Great White Twittersling dragon into extinction. Nesting Opaleye dragons had almost wiped out the Central Pacific's work on the Transcontinental Railroad. Many were loath to admit that the relationship between humans and dragons was an avalanche-y one. The world just didn't seem big enough for the two.

But the small victories didn't hurt, Astrid supposed. Small victories like Hiccup giving belly rubs to Terrible Terrors. The resident Night Fury that she swore posed for photos when the mood struck it. Astrid herself had once gotten within six feet of a Deadly Nadder before it had finally spooked and flown away, but neither she nor the dragon had walked away with injuries.

Small victories weren't too much to ask for.

"Hey, what's up with Ruffnut?" Hiccup wondered, his gaze wandering off towards the general direction of the horizon. "She's acting-_-_ _weirder_."

"She's been conspiring with Marie. Or Marie's been conspiring with her." Astrid thought about it for a moment and then waved a dismissive hand. "They're conspiring. Let's just leave it at that."

"Gods, they're the last people we need conspiring. Or-_-_ y'know, just being around each other." Hiccup muttered. When Ruffnut and Marie conspired, the outcomes were never pretty and sometimes they were psychologically scarring. Usually they were things you wanted badly to forget. For example, Snotlout never talked about the origin of his three-year old phobia of tuna fish sandwiches.

And to be quite fair, no one really wanted to know. He still twitched strangely if someone mentioned mayonnaise.

"Do you know what they're trying to do?"

"Trying to shove us together I think. If I interpreted the hippo poop comments correctly." Astrid said dryly, putting her chin in one hand. "You know what the worst part is? They're not even trying to be subtle about it."

Hiccup shrugged. "Probably because of the bet."

He was too focused on the purring dragon sprawled at his feet to pay much attention to the words that had just left his mouth. He also didn't notice the way Astrid's lips collapsed into a frown that was both murderous and thoughtful.

"Hiccup..." Her voice was littered with bright red, 'turn back now!' signs. "What bet?"

Hiccup performed his best impression of a marble statue and Astrid's suspicion ratcheted up several notches. Undoubtedly sensing her change of mood, the three Terrors skittered away, taking to the air in a matter of seconds. Hiccup wished he could do the same. He was screwed now.

"What bet, Hiccup?" Astrid asked again, more sternly. She crossed her arms for added effect.

"D-Did I say 'bet'? I didn't say that!" Hiccup cursed the slight stutter. "I meant- er... 'net'! Like-_-_ internet! You were hearing things! Because 'bet' and 'net' rhyme and I wasn't enunciating and Ms. Fokker probably woulda killed me; you know how she was about that whole enunciating thing-_-_"

His muddled attempt at a half-assed explanation petered out. Astrid had crossed straight into glowering. She knew he was talking crap. He always started to babble if someone caught him in a lie. And her hearing was excellent. She had distinctly heard the word "bet".

"Hey look! Marie has crackers!"

Marie did indeed have crackers but that wasn't incentive enough to go running to her. Nonetheless, Hiccup was off like a shot towards his section-mate, obviously hoping for a display of woodwind solidarity to protect him. And his dad was over there, talking to a tuba who had expressed an interest in becoming a dragon hunter. Wasn't it a parent's prerogative to protect their sons from incensed, would-be girlfriends?

"Oh no you don't! You're not sneaking out this!" Astrid roared, taking off after him.

It was a less of an attempt to catch up with him and more of a race to get to Marie first. Hiccup might get woodwind solidarity on his side, but if Astrid got there first, she would have the advantage of the solidarity that ladies enjoyed when it came to dealing with men.

Hopefully. Marie didn't always side with her gender in regards to men. At times, she seemed to view her fellow females on the whole as nothing more than a bunch of yammering ninnies and she didn't go out of her way to make a secret of it.

"Marie!"

The blonde clarinetist looked up from her crackers and a ratty notebook filled with her chicken-scratch handwriting.

"What's this I heard about a bet?" Astrid demanded, striding up the last few paces like a thundercloud.

"What bet?" Marie inquired innocently, though her eyes flickered to Hiccup who had taken something of a roundabout path to get to his section-mate and consequently arrived a second too late.

"You know what I'm talking about." Astrid said impatiently. "Some bet that you and Ruffnut are in on. The one that's got something to do with the hippo poop comments Ruffnut made the other day."

"Oh, you mean the one that's never going to happen now because _Jacob_ can't keep his mouth shut?" Marie shot him a sharp glare. "Nice going, dickweed. Be sure to thank your left knee for getting some."

"It slipped out!" Hiccup said defensively. "And why are you still bringing that up?!"

"Because it's like sitting on a lump! Only I can't smooth it out because it's on my ass!" Marie said, making a vague gesture to the bruise's location.

"Get one of those hemorrhoid pillows if it's bothering you so much! Just tell me about the bet!" Astrid demanded, losing her patience. She did not want Hiccup and Marie to start taking digs at each other. If allowed, they could go on worse than the twins. Astrid couldn't help but wonder if Marie had some kind of chip on her shoulder where the Haddock bloodline was concerned.

Marie waved a hand dismissively. "Trust me when I say you don't know want to know." she said. "It'll only send your blood pressure skyrocketing and then you'll get all angry and annoyed and I value the continued use of my fingers too much to risk telling you."

"My blood pressure is fine!" Astrid snapped, her patience straining. Suddenly, breaking Marie's fingers seemed like a very attractive idea. She pushed back the impulse. No need to get violent. Not yet. "And I _want_ to know. Because it's my life that you're exploiting for entertainment!"

"And mine." Hiccup added very quietly. Because he figured it might be better if he stayed out of the way. The whole fact there was a bet at all didn't really bother him, but Astrid was taking it as a personal offense. If a cat-fight broke out, the fur was really going to fly.

Marie frowned, looking very much like the miserable lunch ladies that worked in the school's cafeteria and tried to make you feel guilty for not making your lunch nutritionally balanced. Astrid suddenly felt strangely pinned under the stare, but she squared her shoulders and mustered up her strongest glare in return. Marie was **not** going to make her feel guilty for interrogating her about the nature of this bet.

The blonde clarinetist responded in kind, leveling a look at Astrid that bespoke of yammering ninnies and how she would not suffer them happily. For a minute, all the girls did was try to one-up each other in the glaring contest while Hiccup looked on, knowing better than to get involved.

"Fine." Marie flipped the ratty notebook shut in a carelessly angry gesture. "It's about when you and Hiccup finally shut up and kiss each other."

Of all the subjects for a bet, that was the last one Astrid had anticipated.

Okay, she knew that the topic of her and Hiccup was high on the gossip chain; her being one of the most desireable girls in the school (reportedly) and Hiccup being quite the nerdy little geek. She heard their names mentioned by the school grapevine a couple times a day, at least. She knew that if they finally got together officially, the topic would be seriously hot stuff.

She just hadn't thought people were going to start taking bets on it.

Perhaps she had considerably underestimated her fellow students.

This **was** a load of high school teenagers. It was about this time that the allowance money started to dry up and they were expected to get jobs, only that didn't help much because their paychecks were usually spent on car insurance and gas money, the latter of which had reached prices so high people were going bald from pulling on their hair so much.

Maybe she was grossly underestimating her (desperate) classmates.

"Oh, and Hiccup? _Thanks_." Marie somehow frowned daggers. "I'm gonna lose now and the saxes are going to be unbearable."

"Some suffering will do you good." Astrid put in, a bit harshly. Always good to see the Queen of Loons knocked down a peg or two. "Now, how long as this been going on?"

"Sncgthgrd." Marie mumbled around a mouthful of magically appearing cracker.

"How 'bout you say that again, with some vowels this time." Astrid suggested. She pointedly curled her hands into fists.

"Since eighth grade." Marie repeated in a more audible voice. "Well, technically seventh grade. When we were at the May practices and you two made the big moony eyes at each other from across the parade block for the first time." she added, avoiding eye contact with the pair of them. "Half the band saw it. It was like watching the sun rise on fast-forward."

"Since eighth grade." Astrid repeated disbelievingly, canting an eyebrow. "Are you telling me that half the band is betting on whether or not Hiccup and I will kiss before- when?"

"Graduation." Marie obligingly filled in the blank. "And it's not **half** the band."

"Then how many people is it?"

"Well, in the band-_-_"

"**In** the band?!"

Marie scowled at her for interrupting when she was trying to explain. "It's more like three-fourths of half the band." she replied.

"There's almost ninety people in this band. You're telling me that-_-_" Astrid did some quick math. "That almost twenty of them are in on this?"

Sure, twenty people didn't sound like a lot, but frankly, two people was too many.

"Twenty?... Maybe closer to thirty. It's mostly the juniors and seniors these days. Mostly the woodwinds and the colorguard. Some brass and percussion, I think. The full list is at home. They've all got their own deadlines, but I bet against them anyways."

"And what about _outside_ the band?" Astrid inquired, looming dangerously.

Marie thought for a moment. "I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head; that list is at home too. And they've all got their own deadlines; prom and such, one of you dumping the other. Seriously, Jack's the only person with me on the end-of-season deadline-_-_"

"You dragged Jack into this?!" Hiccup interrupted, half-scandalized, half-horrified at what she'd done. "What have you done you horrible woman? How many of my friends have you dragged down into your pit of insanity?!"

Marie rolled her eyes. "My gods, when it comes to your friends, you sure get defensive."

"What do you expect, Marie? I don't have a rotating roster of individuals to hang out with. I have approximately _three_ friends outside of marching band." Hiccup waved the corresponding number of fingers at her. "And all three of them are wonderfully sane. They aren't corrupted and weird like the rest of the people I hang out with!"

"Hiccup, Jack is an art-student who spends more time lurking around the band suite than the art room and he tends to get sucked in anyways because the black hole of this band is just that strong." Marie informed him. "One of your other best friends is a hot-tempered Scot with more hair on the top of her head than Shrek the sheep had on his entire body and an accent I can _barely_ understand when she gets going, and the last one is the three-time winner of the Grand Nationals Little Miss Glitz Pageant, only heir of the Glockenblume International empire who decided to rename herself after a character in a fairy tale and got it _approved_ by the courts. What I'm trying to ask you is, what's your point?"

"My point is I like having the mostly sane friends outside of band. Band is weird and I just don't want them turning weird too." Hiccup said, shrugging. "Weird_er_."

"Hiccup," Astrid let out a slightly exasperated sigh. "Jack was weird long before you started band. You two have been glued at the hip ever since he moved here. The two of you have been corrupting each other for years."

"Besides, it's just Jack and I _didn't_ drag him into this. He asked, I answered, then he put ten bucks on the end-of-season deadline and I offered to split the total winnings with him." Marie explained, sensing that the worst of the danger had passed and it was okay to make eye contact again. "And Hiccup, you should be flattered and relieved that your art-bro has that much confidence in you and Astrid."

"And why are **you** making a big deal out of this now? You didn't start protesting until I found out about it." Astrid said to Hiccup.

"I **did** protest it when Marie told me because I didn't want you finding out. I knew you'd react like this." the clarinet section leader replied. "I just didn't think it was that big of a surprise." he added _sotto voce_.

Astrid considered this for a second. Given Marie's personality and tendencies, her putting a bet on something as nebulous and indefinable as a relationship wasn't terribly out of character.

"Points for trying, but I don't think you could have kept this under-wraps for too long." Astrid said and Hiccup conceded with a shrug. "Now I just want to know why."

"Entertainment, I guess. We get bored." Marie shrugged. "Anyways, the biggest bet's between me and the saxes. On one level, I'd rather you two just kiss and get it over with 'cause the moony eyes and the innuendo and the bad flirting are killing me."

"What's the bidding at?" Astrid asked out of morbid curiosity. What was her relationship with Hiccup worth to these leeches?

"Outside of the band... I don't think you wanna know how much Jack and I stand to get out of this if we win. In the band, we are up twenty-three bucks. And a Hershey's bar." Marie replied. "You want in too? I'm trying to convince the saxes to bump it up. They're wusses. Must think they're gonna lose." She flipped open the ratty notebook and poised a pen over the paper with a cheerful smile. "What can I put you down for?"

"Thirty bucks on the end-of-season-deadline, provided 'end of season' means the Variety Show." Stoic rumbled, seeming to appear from nowhere.

"_Dad_!" Hiccup burst out, positively mortified and betrayed that his own father was betting on his (admittedly lacking) love life.

"Season ain't post-mortem until after the Variety Show." Marie quickly shook hands with him and then jotted down the number. "We'll have to split the winnings three ways."

"Fifty-fifty all around?" Stoic inquired, ignoring his son's horrified expression. Hey, a little parental humiliation was good for a teenager. Parenting wouldn't be any fun if he wasn't allowed to have some at his son's expense.

"Sixty-forty." the blonde clarinetist said firmly. "You get fat government checks every month. Jack doesn't work at all and my bank account is getting smaller every day."

_Well... At least they're confident?..._ Astrid supposed she oughta feel comforted by that. At least _someone_ was confident that there was potential for something long-term.

Astrid never really knew where they both stood. She didn't push Hiccup. She knew better. The harder she pushed, the more likely Hiccup would retreat just out of simple spite. It was hard to gauge the likelihood of a long-term relationship if he kept pulling back last-minute. Nearly seventeen years old and he still seemed a little creeped out by girls.

Not surprising when one thought about it. The two most influencing adult female figures in his life growing up were both of questionable sanity -_-_ one of them being certifiably insane with all the paperwork to prove it. And growing up around dragon hunters hadn't helped his relative perception of sanity. Neither Marie nor Ruffnut were paragons of femininity (what with the burping contests, the mud wars, the infrequent declarations of revenge on the Y chromosome and their own uteruses, etc). Hiccup was just too close to the other two to consider them role models. As far as Astrid could tell, she was the only well-adjusted female role model in Hiccup's life.

So as far as Hiccup knew, girls were either young and psycho, or old and senile. Which meant it was up to Astrid to prove that this wasn't always the case.

Meanwhile, Hiccup just looked desperately for a hole to crawl into.

* * *

-0-


	12. General Insanity

**A/N:** My utmost apologies for-_-_ How long has it been? Three months or something? Way too long, anyways. This is basically what happens when other fandoms attack. Don't ask about chapter thirteen, I've got no idea.

And sometimes, Marie is a jerk.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Twelve: General Insanity

* * *

"GOOD MORNING! DID YOU REMEMBER YOUR SUNSCREEN?!"

"THOR'S TITS, WOMAN! NOT IN MY EAR!"

The two voices bellowed through the band suite like fog horns, piercing the early morning haze of sleepiness. One belonged to Steiny and the other to a rather startled Marie. Hiccup squeezed the sunscreen bottle too hard and ended up with a larger-than-intended glob of lotion. He shrugged, peeled down his socks and began smearing the lotion all over his legs.

It was Friday at last. The final day of band camp. Simultaneously the easiest and the hardest day of them all. The instructors didn't work the students quite as hard, but they were coming off a week's worth of strenuous exercise and feeling every second of it. They were all dead-tired and sunburnt and mostly just looking forward to the end of the day when they would be let off the leash.

At the moment, all Hiccup could think was that he clearly wasn't wearing a strong enough SPF. Every year, he got sunburned and usually in the same place. Where he hadn't broken out in freckles, he'd turned a formidable shade of lobster pink. It was mostly concentrated along the back of his neck, his arms and his lower legs. There was a little on his face, making the skin around his nose and eyes feel unnaturally tight.

Marie came ambling back to the woodwind area a moment later. Red sunburn encompassed most of her lower right arm and backs of her legs were seared to a painful-looking red. She was a fair skinned individual who would burn like nothing else despite the amount of sunscreen she put on. The sunburn would fade into a tan as they progressed into the school year.

"Morning..." she said to Hiccup through a yawn, dropping her things onto the bench with little grace. Her body followed shortly thereafter, her limbs sprawling out to take up as much room as possible.

Hiccup grunted in response. The long week and his still midnight-oriented sleeping patterns had caught up with him. He had also spent the better part of an hour on Skype lecturing Jack about why teaming up with Marie for any reason was not conducive to one's continued good health and warning him that he was probably in violation of the Bro Code and that revenge would be swift and furious.

Most irritatingly, Jack had just laughed.

Marie tried to stretch the pervading stiffness out of her limbs and rolled her head in Hiccup's direction. "Got some red on your face." she said.

"So do you." he replied.

"Yeah. Last day." she commented, reaching for her sunscreen.

"Yep. Last day." Hiccup agreed.

"And no sleep tonight."

"None at all."

They lapsed into a mutual silence, still too sleepy to get up to much.

The rest of the band arrived in a steady stream. When Astrid arrived, it appeared that she had gotten over whatever feelings had been bruised for her over the last two days, as she slung her things to the floor before squeezing down into the space that was offered between Hiccup and Marie, so close the three of them were elbow to elbow.

One thing about band camp was that it gave one a chance to discern the sleeping habits of their fellow band-mates. Specifically, whether or not they were cheerful morning larks or unrepentant night owls.

The god-forsaken morning people like Steiny bounced around on their toes, the devil herself clacking the drumstick off the gock block and bellowing greetings at everyone's face and making sure they had all brought sunscreen. It was quite possible Steiny drank bottled sunshine every morning to go with her caffeine. She all but demanded smiles out of everyone she ran into.

The night owls, on the other hand, were still visibly sleepy and looked somewhat grumpy about being forced out of bed at ungodly hours. They were the ones who went through the morning routine in a quiet, robotic sort of way, sneaking in a bit of sugar since energy drinks were forbidden.

The band as a whole was doing a lot more yawning and ambling along, but as they gathered, a curiously charged atmosphere began developing; a new enthusiasm now that the end of the week was in sight. It was strangely infectious and very fast-acting. By the time they were herded out onto tower field, Hiccup felt fully charged and ready to go. He felt like the heat wouldn't be able to affect him and he barely had to work at rallying his section into a good mood.

The drum majors led the band through stretching and fundamentals in a loud, boisterous way, trying to work the band into high spirits. When they were finished with fundamentals, Gobber came forward with a shit-eating grin plastered over his face.

"Ladies an' gentlemen, I hold in my hands the final charts for the closer." he said happily, presenting the last packet for the band to see. "This packet is the only things that stand between us an' havin' the whole show charted b'fore the mornin' ends. Who wants to get it finished?"

He was pleased with the volume at which the band roared.

"Alright! Section leaders! C'mere an' get the charts!"

The charts were quickly distributed among the section leaders and Hiccup passed them out to his section with a grin of glee.

"Hey," Kate the freshman started curiously. "Have you guys ever gotten through the entire show before the end of band camp?"

Hiccup and Marie exchanged thoughtful looks.

"This is a first in our tenure." Hiccup answered, searching the chart for his number. "I think last year we had to park-'n'-blow the closer on the first competition."

"_Gloria_ sucked." Marie commented idly.

"Yeah, the music sucked, the show sucked, Clay City was kicking our ass, _Woodlan_ took State. Couldn't tell you what the hell was up with that..." Hiccup could grumble at length about last year's season. It had been a bad year for the band; everything had started to shred at the seams for no reason. They had failed to get through Regionals that season.

"Is Woodlan a good band?" Ashley asked.

"No, we can play Woodlan under the table any day, but they beat Pioneer **and** Knox. Everyone must have been sucking. Our marching coordinator said if we had gotten to State last year, we might have taken first." Hiccup replied.

"Or at least we would have come in second behind Lewis Cass." Marie corrected.

"Everyone know where they're going?"

There was a collective murmur of assent, then the section spread out to find their next chart. Hiccup glanced ahead at the remaining number of pages. There was only nine of them. It was a definite that they would get them finished well before noon. They would even have a chance to put some polish on the final product.

He was looking forward to it.

* * *

"Oh, great." came Marie's incredibly enthused voice.

It was late afternoon. Friday always ran a little differently, due to the fact band camp effectively ended once the afternoon sectionals were finished. It had run up to three o'clock and Gobber had generously extended naptime into a full hour, overtaking the hour normally used for full concert rehearsal. They were putting on a performance a little later tonight. He wanted them to be at their best.

"Problems?" Hiccup wondered.

"Yeah, problems. Look at this. Talk about passive-aggressive. She heaved all her crap on my stuff." Marie gestured to the backpack, sleeping bag, pillow and blanket that appeared to be slowly crushing her own belongings.

"Oh boy, passive-aggressive. That's something to look forward to." Hiccup grumbled.

Irritably, the second-chair clarinet unceremoniously dumped everything that was Ashlyn's onto the floor and gave it a few kicks for good measure. Then she opened up her own backpack to make sure nothing inside had suffered damage.

"I hate the fact Gobber doesn't like kicking people out of band." she muttered, rifling through her more fragile belongings and checking them with a keen eye.

"Technically, she hasn't done anything bad enough to get herself kicked out." Hiccup pointed out diplomatically.

"Well, if she wants passive-aggressive, I'll give her passive-aggressive in spades. I'm good at that." Marie punctuated her claim by throwing another kick at Ashlyn's bag. This one knocked it over. The zipper was open and when the bag hit the floor, no less than three packs of Oreos spilled out. The two clarinets stared at the delicious haul for a moment.

"Dude, are those mint frosting?"

"Yep. Three packs! Think she was gonna share?"

"Not with us. She totally doesn't need those. She's chubby enough."

"I just had a thought. Since we are the ones who have to pull an all-nighter tonight, perhaps we should... help ourselves?"

"Hiccup, I didn't know you'd dare to think so deviously; rationalizing it away like this."

"I'm clearly much further gone than I'd previously thought. Besides, after all the trouble she gave us earlier this week, I think a much more heartfelt apology is in order."

And that was how Astrid came across them some ten minutes later, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall and sniggering like rich thieves over an open pack of Oreos. The sight of this worried her even more than the sight of Ruffnut and Marie giggling over whatever, because Hiccup was insanely clever and Marie was cleverly insane and whenever they teamed up, something truly diabolical was in the works.

"Where'd you get those?" Astrid asked warily.

"Ashlyn."

"Where's Ashlyn?"

"Napping."

Actually laying down was mandatory for the rookies.

Astrid shook her head. "You guys are cruel, you know that?"

"It's her fault! I was alone with her for three years! She made me this way!" Hiccup protested, yet making no moves away from his section-mate.

Marie offered the pack to the colorguard captain. "Want one?"

"You keep your ill-gotten cookies and choke on them." Astrid said with a tone of disappointment. She inhaled. "Oh, but they smell so good..."

"Don't torture yourself." Marie advised, stretching her arm out a little further so the pack was closer to Astrid. The colorguard captain staunchly and defiantly held her ground. She wasn't going to give in, she wasn't going to give in, she wasn't going to-

"Screw it, I've never gotten guilty over chocolate before and I won't start now." Astrid fished two Oreos out of the pack and ignored the grins the two clarinets gave her. "I just came to tell you guys that they're handing out class schedules down by the main office."

"Alright! Time to see if my hard work this summer paid off!" Marie crowed. She stuffed the swiped Oreos into her backpack and jumped to her feet, running out the band suite.

"It better have. That was the most strung out I'd ever seen her." Hiccup commented, trailing in his section-mate's wake.

"Didn't she already get the results? She said they were mailing them out at the beginning of the month." Astrid wondered.

Hiccup shook his head. "I don't think she's had time to check the mail yet."

The corridor outside the main office was filled with various administrative officials who sat at tables where the incoming freshmen were being registered. Slightly to the side were the tables set with the class schedules for the remainder of the school and these were manned by student council representatives. Hiccup and Astrid spotted several of their classmates clustered around the senior table and moved over to join them.

"Oh guys! Look at this awesome schedule of mine!" Marie trilled happily, emerging from the cluster and holding out her class schedule. "It's completely math-free. It's _beautiful_."

"Oh, you passed! Congrats!" Astrid said, honestly pleased. She raised her hand for a celebratory high-five, which was eagerly returned. "Do you know what your grade is?"

Marie shook her head. "Fred says the results **did** come, but I haven't gone looking for them yet." she explained. She heaved a sigh. "I'm glad I don't have to do this again. That class started haunting my dreams. Don't laugh, I'm serious! I had nightmares about giant killer mutant rectangles!"

"Oh, you mean concave polygons?" Hiccup offered brightly.

"I hate you."

After three years of struggling with it, Marie had passed Algebra 1 by the skin of her teeth. Guidance Counselor N-Z had signed her up for a compressed summer geometry course, having decided that dragging the course out over the school year would do the eighteen-year old no favors. She had clearly scraped through that with a passing grade and now had enough graduation credits that she could pile on the electives without falling short of the mark.

Muffling sniggers, but not so successfully masking smiles, the other two band seniors gathered their schedules from their amused classmates and shuffled around the corner back into the commons, which they started drifting idly across.

"Giant killer mutant rectangles?" Astrid repeated, still finding the subject of the nightmares rather amusing.

"With fangs." Marie used her fingers to mime gnashing teeth. "They were chasing me across tower field, trying to make me find their side values or something. That was your fault." she added to Hiccup.

"Me? How are your nightmares my fault?"

"The sectionals. You scheduled them right after my class. I had math and band on my brain all day. What did you think was going to happen at night?"

"What your brain does in its spare time has nothing to do with me." Hiccup assured her, snatching her schedule away from her to compare it with his own. His eyebrows went up. "Wow, except for band, we don't have a single class together."

"Really?" Marie leaned over his shoulder to see for herself.

"That's a first. You guys have shared most of your classes for years." Astrid said, leaning over Hiccup's other shoulder.

"Yeah, that's gonna be weird."

Hiccup glanced up from his perusal. "You're taking Scandinavian History?"

"It sounded interesting. The teacher's name makes me think he's from the area, so he oughta be able to make it interesting." the second-chair clarinet nodded. She snatched Astrid's schedule away from her, scanned it, then frowned at it. "And why are you taking Drama second semester? Have you _met_ any of the Drama freaks we have in this school?"

"I happen to be friends with some of those Drama freaks and they're really not freaks. They're _passionate_." Astrid said defensively, taking her schedule back from the grabby hands. "What are **you** taking this year since you've got a free slot in your required courses?"

"Personally, I'd swear it's everything. Etymology, creative writing, home ec... Wow, you really are packing on the electives." Hiccup commented.

"You're one to talk, Van Gogh. Aren't you taking two art classes this year?" Astrid peeled his schedule away from his hands. "**And** AP Dragonology. Wow, you're practically taking three art classes this year."

"It's for science."

"Sure it is." Tuffnut said sneeringly as he and his sister darted past.

"Say that again with a straight face." Ruffnut challenged. "And any of you know where locker block D is?"

Hiccup blinked. "We have a block D now?"

Marie grabbed her schedule back and glanced at her locker assignment. "Looks like we do. Are we all assigned to the new block D?"

There was a murmur of assenting replies.

"This is block A." Hiccup said, pointing to the dual rows of lockers now in front of them. They had drifted all the way to the other side of the commons, where the school proper really began. "B is around the corner right by the art rooms. And block C is further up this hall, right?"

"Yeah, that's the extra sixty they added back in sophomore year." Marie replied, consulting her mental map of the school. She tapped a finger to her pursed lips. "Now that I think about it, Block D might be the ones upstairs."

With that, she broke into a quick sprint, darting down the hallway on her toes. Astrid and Hiccup had to dash after her to keep up and the twins trailed along in a lazy fashion, mostly for the sake of curiosity. A new flight of stairs had been installed beyond the T-intersection, right beside the side of one of the art rooms.

"Dude, haven't been up here yet." Tuffnut commented when they had all passed over the landing, looking around with bright-eyed interest at the new space.

"Let's wreck it." Ruffnut suggested.

"Can't you two walk in anywhere without thinking about destroying it?" Hiccup wondered, shooting the twins a disappointed look over his shoulder.

"No." they replied.

Hiccup frowned.

"At least they're honest." Astrid pointed out to him.

"Ugh, I wish they would be less honest sometimes." Hiccup groaned. He straightened his schedule with a flourish and went to find his locker.

The five of them were spread out all over the locker block. The closest person to Hiccup was Ruffnut, but she was still some thirty lockers down from him. That meant none of them were sharing the same homeroom (evidently, the administration had finally wised up to the perils of having the twins in the same homeroom - only took them six years).

The only difference between the new lockers and the old was that the new lockers were shiny and free of scuffs, scrapes and dents, and possibly harder to keep jammed open with a properly inserted paper clip. Otherwise, they were no bigger, wider or deeper than the lockers downstairs.

"You'd think with us being seniors they could give us lockers that aren't as crappy as the rest." Ruffnut complained, once they all had finished making sure they still remembered how to work a combination lock.

"What are you talking about? It's their way of saying they don't actually care about us seniors because we'll be gone in a year." Tuffnut told her. "It's the freshmen they want sticking around. Why do you think we haven't been on any field trips since ninth grade?"

"Because it's expensive?" Astrid suggested.

"Exactly. They're not gonna waste that money on us!" Tuffnut said indignantly. "The whole thing about seniors getting at least semi-preferential treatment? It's a myth."

_Didn't know Tuffnut knew words like 'preferential'..._ Hiccup mused, finding it slightly disconcerting that male twin did have a larger vocabulary than he normally demonstrated. "Where'd you get that theory?"

The trumpeter turned to the clarinetist with a flat, indignant expression. "Isn't it obvious?"

Hiccup shook his head. "Not really."

"C'mon, the crappy lockers are only the tip of the iceberg. We totally got shafted when they were doing the remodel." Tuffnut said with total conviction.

"We do have a seniors-only section of the cafeteria now." Hiccup pointed out. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as getting shafted."

"See how long that lasts. Second we try to defend it, the cafeteria monitors will get on our asses about being nice to the underclassmen." Ruffnut predicted. She turned to her twin. "Like that time-_-_"

"And remember when-_-_"

"Yeah, that was shitty. And also when-_-_"

"Definitely! And that other time-_-_"

"What the hell was up with that?"

Astrid and Hiccup exchanged a long-suffering look of incomprehension. The twins didn't finish each other's sentences. They just didn't finish their sentences. Between just the two of them, they didn't exactly need to. Their brains worked on the same wavelength ninety-nine percent of the time and it sort of negated the need for consistent verbal communication.

Unfortunately, this went a long way to making them completely incomprehensible to the rest of the world.

"Well, that's a great theory, you guys. I think you just need a _little_ more proof before you can tell it to other people. Let's go Hiccup." Astrid grabbed him by the shirt collar and hauled him away from the two trumpeters. He had no choice but to stumble after her. Once inside the relative safety of the band suite, she released his collar.

"Is it just me or are the twins turning into pseudo-anarchists?" Hiccup wondered, rubbing his neck where the fabric had dug into his skin. "Formulating conspiracy theories, wanting to wreck things on sight, that sort of thing."

"Personally I blame the over-exposure to Marie. She's got to be exuding some kind of pheromone. I think your inhibition drops if you're around her too long." Astrid said, shrugging. "I dunno, there also could be something in the water around the elementary school. Everyone from Touchstone Elementary seems a little..." She twirled a finger in circles in the air near her temple.

"I dunno, but I guess we'll see what happens when your sister starts school." Hiccup said.

Astrid paused mid-stride and then heaved out a sigh. "Oh that's right, she's starting to kindergarten this year." she groaned, slapping a hand to her forehead in exasperation. "Geez, that completely slipped my mind. We haven't even done any back-to-school shopping and she needs like, everything!"

"And to think I get ribbed for forgetting my section-mate's names." Hiccup sniggered.

"Shut up, you've got no excuse."

"_I've_ got no excuse? So you're excused for forgetting that your own sister starts school this year but I don't get one for forgetting the names of my section-mates?"

"Yep, that's how it works."

Hiccup eyed the colorguard captain warily and edged away from her. "You're turning on me." he said. "You're gonna go crazy like the rest of them."

Before Astrid could assure him that she wasn't about to do that, a whine from around the corner cut her off.

"Those were mine!"

"They were? I found them in my bag, how the hell was I supposed to know? I don't remember everything I packed in there this morning."

Hiccup threw out a hand to stop Astrid from turning the corner when Marie's nonchalant tones came back at them. They looked at each other for half an instant, then proceeded to peer cautiously around the corner. Ashlyn was red in the face, possibly from anger that her section-mate had been all but dancing around her. Marie was casually digging through her bag, but there was a sense about her that she wasn't enjoying having to deal with a yammering ninny and could start showing it at any moment. Best to stay hidden, really.

"Oh, don't get your feelings all hurt. Besides, a little deprivation in moderation ain't gonna kill ya." she said and then had the audacity to pat Ashlyn's somewhat pudgy belly, a blatant sign that she thought Ashlyn could stand to lose a few pounds. The younger girl certainly didn't appreciate the implication and she opened her mouth, drawing in a deep breath, but the other clarinet was faster.

"Now, now, let's save our outdoor voices for the outdoors." Marie instructed with the air of a patient kindergarten teacher. "I don't like you, you don't like me; we've established that. There's no need to drive it into the ground until China starts wondering why there's a big wooden post in the middle of the street. I think it'll be less stressful on both of us if we just don't interact with each other outside of band. Mind you, I will gleefully schadenfreude your misery to the fullest extent whenever the opportunity comes along. And if you wanna keep this little stupid thing going, you're welcome to it, but just remember one thing: I've been at this for _years_. You're never gonna win."

The cheerful slasher smile was present and even being on the periphery of it gave one chills. The unsettling part, Hiccup realized now that he really had the chance to watch it from the outside, was that there was nothing really threatening about Marie's body language. She wasn't doing the forward, personal-space-invading thing; she was actually standing just out of arm's reach. Her voice didn't even qualify as threatening.

_It's more like she's just stating facts._

"Marie, stop traumatizing our rookie!" Hiccup called out pointlessly.

"I'm not traumatizing her! She's receiving a valuable warning!" Marie called back, never taking her eyes of Ashlyn. She made the 'I'm watching you' gesture before moving off, possibly to go traumatize another rookie. Hiccup sighed and fell back to lean against the wall.

"Y'know, there are some days where I think she's trying to usurp my position as section leader." he commented.

"No, you two share it, I think." Astrid decided, smiling sympathetically. "I mean, you've been stuck together as the only two clarinets for so long you've sort of mutated into joint-section leadership, especially since you're the only two seniors. You're both in charge, for the most part. Except, Hiccup, you're the Good Witch of the North. You provide the munchkins with love and tenderness and gently show them the right way to do things. Marie's the Wicked Witch of the West who cackles menacingly and threatens their dogs if they do wrong."

Hiccup thought about that for a moment.

"Wait, Does that make Ruffnut the Wicked Witch of the East who got crushed under the house?" he wondered. "Does that also mean one of my rookies is Dorothy? It better not be Kristen! Marie's contaminating her! The movie didn't end that way! And when did we start comparing band to the Wizard of Oz?"

"Well, think about it. Everything outside **those** doors," She pointed to the band suite doors. "Is Kansas. Where everything is normal and boring and sepia-toned. The minute you come through to **this** side, you're surrounded by very strange people who do very strange things. For _fun_."

"But Astrid, we don't have a lollypop guild!" Hiccup pointed out, still going along with the joke. "Where's our lollypop guild?"

"Oh, man up!" She slapped him playfully on the arm.

"Ow! Astrid!"

"What?"

"I'm sunburned all the way up my arms!"

"Sorry."

* * *

**A/N:** Woodlan. Clay City. Pioneer. Knox. Lewis Cass. Go on. Guess which state I live in.


	13. Frostbite

**A/N:** So, this is the last fully completed chapter that I have. I'm having trouble with Chapter 14 and I have a request.

Could someone please point me in the direction of a good fanfic with the Big Four (Hiccup, Jack, Rapunzel and Merida)? What's making chtp14 difficult to write is that I have no precidence for how to write these characters interacting with one another. Ultimately, I'm looking for something that's moderately lengthy (5 chapters or more unless you know a good one-shot) with little to no shipping, preferably.

Links won't show up in reviews. Just give me the title, author and where to find it. Thanks in advance.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

* * *

**How to Train Your Marching Band**

Chapter Thirteen: Frostbite

* * *

When five o'clock rolled around, the families started to arrive.

The final act of band camp was the Parent Picnic. Not so much a picnic now as it was a potluck, but the parents were encouraged to drop in, socialize with the other parents over a hot meal and then watch the band perform however much of the show they had gotten through, music and marching together. Allowing the parents to see what their kids were up to encouraged them to become more involved in what their kids were up to. Gobber figured it was also a good way to foster interest for marching band in the younger generations.

The group was settled on one of the new sofa-sets in the downstairs commons, waiting for their families to turn up. The cafeteria had become the epicenter for a growing mass of adults who probably hadn't seen their kids properly all week. They bore steaming dishes of food and plates of desserts and various beverages. There was also a growing swarm of younger siblings, the most adorable of whom were hefted into arm and introduced to the more approachable members of the band.

"This couch is absurdly comfortable." Fishlegs commented, half-sunken into the cushions.

"Yeah, I could fall asleep on this." Tuffnut agreed.

"Good thing. I didn't bring anything for Fred to sleep on." Marie commented.

Astrid canted an eyebrow. "Fred's staying over this year? Run for the hills, guys. All of Marie's minions will be in the same place."

"Fred's not my minion, he's my brother."

"Brother, minion; he's under your thrall either way."

"We use **our** little brother like a minion. We make him do our chores." Tuffnut remarked. "I mean, the chores we still have. Which isn't many. 'Cause we kept breaking stuff. He actually gets off really easy. We need to fix that." he added to his sister.

"How does he ever survive with such loving and caring older siblings?..." Astrid wondered blandly. She didn't want to know. Daily life at the Thorston household was prime fodder for nightmares and ulcers, if the stories she'd heard over the years were anything to go by.

"Well, we wouldn't make him if he started fighting back. We stopped making Coralie do stuff when she started biting us."

"I was so proud of her that day she finally drew blood." Ruffnut said nostalgically and she wasn't kidding about it. She held up her arm. "Look, you can still where her teeth marks are!"

"We aren't allowed to bite each other. Dad says if we start using our teeth on each other, the Tooth Fairy gets 'em all." Snotlout said, covering his mouth reflexively. Spitelout had given the lecture while displaying his largest pair of pliers.

"My dad said something pretty similar, but he also said the Tooth Fairy would do it herself and it wouldn't be anything like going to the dentist. No anesthetic. Just a pair of pliers and you're strapped down so you can't wiggle around. And she wouldn't give you any money for your teeth." Fishlegs said, cringing into himself as he managed to freak himself out. Fear of that happening to him (real or not) had been the only thing that had kept him from resorting to biting his older brothers in the past.

"My sister doesn't bite. Never even tried, so we don't have to traumatize her with horror stories." Astrid said, deciding that having a sweet-tempered sister who didn't start fights and didn't bite people was something to be proud of.

"That's 'cause your sister is frikkin' adorable." Ruffnut drawled.

"And she's got a crush on Hiccup."

"_What_?" Hiccup scrambled into a more upright sitting position, looking at the colorguard captain in shock. He hadn't properly met the youngest Hofferson, but memories of a grade-school-aged Astrid danced in his head and he was suddenly seized with the urgent need to run for the hills.

"Relax, she's _five_. Her having a crush on you just means you're good enough a role model to idolize. It'll pass soon enough." Astrid assured him, trying to wipe that horrified expression off his face. "If it makes you feel better, I'm glad she decided to latch on to you than someone else. Say... Snotlout."

"I'd make an awesome role model!" Snotlout boasted and was mostly ignored.

"Yeah, but-" Hiccup's tongue tripped over ways to finish that sentence, the most common being variations of how to say he'd rather have Astrid doing to the crushing, not her five-year old sister. After a frantic second of thinking, he realized there was no way to finish it without it coming out sounding a bit too wrong.

"Y'know what, never mind." Hiccup said, slumping back down and crossing his arms. "Only child here. Your words are foreign to me."

For some reason, Snotlout let out a loud snort. "If you're an only child, then Tuffnut's actually a girl."

One of Hiccup's eyebrows scurried up to his hairline. "Then Tuffnut's a girl, because my mom is dead. Unless you've spent the last seventeen years wondering why your Auntie Val hasn't been around." he said with a bit of snark.

"Astrid." Snotlout made an 'after you' type gesture.

The colorguard captain nodded, then promptly turned and socked a fist so hard into Hiccup's arm that two of her knuckles popped and the force of the punch was enough to send the clarinetist rolling away towards the end of the couch. He let out nothing louder than a gasp, clamping a hand over the newly-assaulted flesh. Fishlegs and the twins cringed sympathetically.

"What the hell? What was that for?" Hiccup demanded, throwing a glare between his cousin and Astrid.

"You're being stupid again." Astrid told him, crossing her arms. "You haven't been an only child since first grade. You practically have a brother. You just don't live with him."

It took a moment for Hiccup to realize what she was talking about.

"Oh-_-_ No, that's just the thing-_-_" he started, but the colorguard captain was swift to cut him off.

"Jack spent two weeks not even attempting to interact with anybody until the weekend you guys started working on that art project together. Next Monday, you ate lunch together. You two were attached at the hip and you already had in-jokes." she said. "You two _bonded_ in about six hours and you've been inseparable ever since. So, brothers. Marie, back me up on this?"

"Weasels don't wear ass-less chaps." Marie said absently, as if she were responding to an entirely different conversation. Then her head shot up and she looked at Astrid with a confused: "Huh? What are we talking about?"

"We're certainly not talking about weasels wearing ass-less chaps." Astrid said, ignoring the fact the twins were clearly trying to imagine it and having entirely too much luck.

"Well I'm not paying attention to your conversation." Marie stated. That much was plainly obvious. She had barely taken her nose out of her notebook to pay attention to the conversation. She had filled up three pages, front and back, in the time since they'd taken their seats.

"I was talking about the art-bros bonding in six hours." Astrid prompted.

"Huh... Yeah, I guess so. Why are you asking me?" Marie wondered, scratching her head. "'S'not like I was in elementary school with you guys."

"I don't entirely trust Snotlout's assessment."

"Hey! I notice everything! Nothing gets by me!" snapped the percussionist in question. "And she's right!" He pointed an accusing finger at Marie. "She wasn't even in elementary school with us! What makes you think she knows better than me?"

"Snotlout, how often do you actually pay attention to what I do?" Hiccup asked flatly. "I mean really actually pay attention and not just glance over to make sure I'm still breathing."

Predictably, Snotlout drew a blank. For the most part, his cousin was a blur on the edge of his attention span unless Hiccup's mood was particularly pervasive. There had been a handful of moments where he had expressed concern for Hiccup's physical or mental well-being, but he could recall nothing specific off the top of his head.

The twins sniggered and Fishlegs hummed idly, having nothing relevant to add to the conversation. Marie twirled her pen once, then put it back to paper and continued writing.

"Hey, Hiccup!"

The clarinetist's head shot up, green eyes zeroing in on a terribly conspicuous individual with white hair and blue eyes, strolling towards them with a confident, cocky expression. The smile that lit up Hiccup's face could rival Marie's manic grin on its best days.

Jack Frost (Hiccup was sure his parents had known _exactly_ what they were naming their kid) was originally from Nome, Alaska. He had lived in Paramount for going on ten years now and still had yet to weather a Midwestern summer with anything resembling tolerance for the ninety-plus degree temperatures. It didn't help that he lived in a house that had been built during a time that pre-dated air conditioning. (This was typical of many of the houses in Paramount, as the town was turn-of-the-century old. Installing air-cons involved a fair bit of remodeling; knocking out walls for the vents or upgrading window frames, for example.)

"Jack!"

Hiccup didn't even half the time to sit up when Astrid, Ruffnut and Marie leapt off the cushions like bolts of lightning and all but tackled the newcomer in a group hug. Jack didn't so much as twitch, accustomed to this behavior. He was mostly amused and pleased by the attention, honestly, and didn't even offer up a token complaint when Ruffnut's fingers found their way into his hair and started stroking it.

Hiccup frowned. "Would you guys get off him?"

"In a minute." Astrid replied.

"No really, it's creepy with the three of you doing that-_-_ Stop stroking his hair!"

"But it's so soft and fluffy!" Marie exclaimed.

"Hiccup, you're the only one who's having a problem with this." Jack said, grinning giddily. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. "A little to the left? Right there, that's nice..."

"'Course, **he** don't have problem. He's the one getting hugged and fawned over and petted by three pretty girls." Snotlout grumbled, having a problem with this.

Tuffnut made a face. "You think my sister's _pretty_?'

"It's an expression!"

Ruffnut was too content where she was to care about what her twin was insinuating this time.

"Hey, how come none of you never hug me like that?" Snotlout demanded. He had never been glomped three (reasonably) attractive girls before, but he wasn't going to die without it happening to him at least a few times.

"'Cause Jack's pretty and you aren't." Ruffnut informed him.

And that was probably all there was to it.

If Hiccup Haddock was the walking soap opera, then Jack Frost was the pretty boy from the toothpaste commercial with an inexplicable number of fans who only watched the soap opera because the toothpaste commercial seemed to only come up during the soap opera.

Jack was _gorgeous_, with that snowy white hair and that alabaster skin and those hypnotic blue eyes... In order to reduce most of the school's female population (and a small percentage of the male population) to mush, all he had to do was flash those pretty white teeth.

Fishlegs had become long-since resigned to the fact he would probably never have three girls happily glomping him in greeting, but nonetheless wouldn't mind being in Jack's place just once. Tuffnut appeared to have mixed feelings on the matter. He would be happy to have three girls swooning over him, but one of them being his sister? Just-_-_ erg.

Hiccup groaned and plopped his forehead down on the back of the couch. Jack was a self-admitted attention whore; he loved having people pay attention to him (as long as it was the right sort of attention). He had been the class clown back in elementary school; a trickster whose goal was to make people laugh and have fun. His antics had landed him in several detentions (skipping gym to cover the chalkboards in artwork, freeing the class hamster, or stealing the glitter-crusted rainbow-vomit unicorn figure from their first grade teacher). Like a true bro, Hiccup had gone down with him.

But he hated the moments when the girls he was friends with decided (once again) that Jack was just so gosh-darned pretty.

Not that it made him feel inadequate in comparison, but there was something very disturbing and depressing about watching the girl he had a crush on swoon over his best friend.

"Hello ladies." Jack's grin widened, his greeting a little delayed as he draped arms around their shoulders and looking entirely too comfortable. "I really just came in here to find Hiccup, but finding him is just the bonus after running into you three."

"Can a hole open up and swallow you?" Hiccup wondered. It would save them all some trouble.

"If it'll make you feel better, we'll cuddle you next, okay?" Marie offered, flashing a smile at her section leader.

"You can cuddle your brother. I saw him in the parking lot." Jack told her and with a delighted "oo!", Marie was off like a shot. (Ruffnut sidled in to take her place.)

Astrid sighed and declared: "I'm not sleeping tonight unless I can put my back to a wall."

"Dude, we're not gonna be sleeping tonight _at all_." Tuffnut said with an excited grin, one that was mirrored on his twin's face. "Marie **and** her brother. It's gonna be like the apocalypse came early."

"Oh, speaking of that," Jack started, extracting himself from between Ruffnut and Astrid.

Hiccup canted an eyebrow. "Speaking of the apocalypse?"

"I always speak of the apocalypse." Jack said seriously. He spread his arms and raised his voice to the level of 'passionate preacher'. "And of the gods will rain fire from the heavens and bring upon a horrible catastrophe that will cleave the earth in two! Unless reparations are made unto the Holy Chalk! Can I get an 'amen'?"

"Amen!" the others shouted in the role of the equally passionate congregation, throwing their hands up. This earned them more than just a few odd looks, but years of acting like nutcases had made them rather immune and by this point, half the band was accustomed to the level of insanity generated by the group.

"Actually no, I meant the sugar apocalypse." Jack corrected himself. "That is, ten pounds of assorted candy and about four gallons worth of soda, all bubbly and fizzy and dripping with caffeine. And your dad brought it." he added to Hiccup.

"Yes! Thank you Uncle Stoic! You always come through when Mom goes on another crazy diet!" Snotlout cheered.

"And I bet he wants me to help bring it in." Hiccup deduced, getting to his feet.

"Don't you already have your ill-gotten cookies?" Astrid sniped, crossing her arms. If she had any time to sleep tonight, she was **definitely** putting her back to the wall and sleeping with one eye open.

"Cookies alone will not get me through the entire night!" Hiccup protested. "Besides, it's to share with the other seniors."

"All right, bring on the sugar coma." Ruffnut dared. She nudged Astrid in the side when the colorguard captain went to speak. "Stop trying to figure out why you're friends with us and just enjoy the ride, would you."

"Yeah Astrid, don't be such a drag." Tuffnut agreed.

"Yeah Astrid, geez."

"I think it's _great_ that you can show such responsibility-_-_" Snotlout started, sucking up. Jack and Hiccup managed to slip away quietly before Astrid started to visibly fume.

"So at what point did Astrid turn into a stick in the mud?" Jack wondered.

"It's shark week around here. All the hormones in the air saturate the rational part of their brains and suppress their ability to process common sense. Turns 'em crazy." Hiccup told him. "Except for Marie. I think she actually gets _less_ crazy, but then she starts talking to herself."

"How is talking to yourself less crazy? I've heard people say that's actually the first sign of going insane."

"Well it is, but it's like she's finishing conversations we started years ago, 'cept I don't think we ever had conversations about weasels wearing ass-less chaps."

Jack stutter-stepped mid-stride as the words sank into his brain, a smile warring with disbelief that such a phrase had even been uttered.

"H-How does a conversation lead into weasels wearing ass-less chaps?" he wondered. "Seriously, what kind of topic do you have to start with to lead into something like _that_?"

Hiccup shrugged. "You'll have to ask Marie, she's the one who said it. And it had nothing to do with the conversation at hand."

"Hmm, maybe I will. I'm _very_ curious." Jack admitted, stroking his chin.

Hiccup pushed open one of the front doors. He grimaced when the still-boiling evening air all but smacked him with its mugginess and glared at Jack in annoyance.

"What, are you still peeved about the girls mobbing me?" the white-haired teen asked.

"It's not that, but while we're on the subject, why do you let them do that?"

"Why not? If they want to cuddle with this gorgeous body, who am I to stop them?"

"Hugging you is like hugging a model skeleton; you know that right?"

"Hugging _you_ is like hugging a model skeleton. You know that right? Don't look at me like that. We're both bony sons of bitches and we know it."

Hiccup groaned. "You just like the hair-stroking part."

"And that makes me a bad person?" Jack instantly adopted an innocent look.

"No, you're making me sweat just looking at you." Hiccup replied, going completely off-topic because he wanted to get off it anyways.

Jack spread his arms again, looking down the blue hoodie draped across his shoulders. It was a lightweight one and unzipped, but it was the fact he was wearing in the middle of the summer.

"Well I'm not taking it off." he said, crossing his arms defensively.

"One day you're gonna collapse from heat-stroke, Frosty." Hiccup predicted, setting off across the grassy knoll.

"And it still won't come off." Jack said defiantly, brushing off imaginary dust. It was one of his favorite hoodies; a custom-order dusted with silver, spidery frost-patterns across the shoulders and up the sleeves. He had the same pattern on a heavyweight darker blue one for the winter.

"Y'know, I don't think you've worn another hoodie all summer. Can you still take that off or have you become one with it?"

"Yes, my clothing has become a part of me. I'm glad you noticed. Hey!" Jack whirled towards him with an excited grin and nearly tripped off the edge of the sidewalk. "We're all staying tonight. We're gonna try and brave a night with the band. Do we have to sleep with the others or can we do the all-nighter thing too?"

"If you're gonna stay up, there's no guarantee you'll get any sleep. And you'll probably get roped into helping us with the skit." Hiccup warned him. "Especially you. 'Cause you're-_-_ y'know."

"Attractive? Photogenic? Swoon-worthy? Aesthetically striking?"

"I was gonna say 'dramatic attention-whore'."

"Oh, that hurts. Right here, Hiccup. You've stabbed me right here. It hurts." Jack said, putting a hand over his heart, his other hand gripping a handful of Hiccup's shirt. "I think I'm bleeding out! I think you killed me with your cruel, cruel words! Oh no, I'm dying!" he wailed in a strangled kind of voice, all but throwing himself on the clarinetist.

Jack out-weighed Hiccup by fifteen or so pounds and had at least four inches on him, although Hiccup was probably the stronger of the pair thanks to the band's marching-mistake discipline policy (five push-ups for every mistake done after a set). But dead weight combined with gravity usually won out over strength (which was why Marie's cling-like-a-monkey-until-they-fall-over strategy was typically effective) and for a second or two, Jack came precariously close to dragging Hiccup to the ground with him. Then with a dramatic flailing of his limbs and a mock-gasp of pain, Jack flopped down onto the blacktop and wrapped his arms around Hiccup's ankle.

"Dad, help. He's got my leg." Hiccup called. They were now only some ten feet away from Truck-zilla (as people were wont to call the massive vehicle).

"I don't fight zombies, son." Stoic called back, extracting two brown paper sacks from the back seat of the truck. "I just like to kick their corpses around. Their heads make for excellent footballs."

Jack sprang to his feet. "I have miraculously revived!"

"Great. Now come here and grab a bag. There's three more in the back." Stoic instructed, sounding vastly unamused, but there was a smile twitching under that mustache of his.

Shoving at each other, the pair of teenagers walked over. Hiccup didn't make it all the way to the truck when Stoic pointedly cleared his throat.

"What, are you too old to give your dad a hug?"

"Yes, yes I am." Hiccup said even as he leaned in to put an arm as far around his father as he could (barely made it halfway). He used it as an opening to try and get near the sack emitting tasty smells. "What did you bring? It smells like fried chicken. And how _much_ did you bring? Are you trying to feed half the band?"

He tried to reach in and grab something, maybe just a wing; a morsel to gnaw on and stop his stomach from gurgling pathetically.

"Back off, you can eat when the rest of the band does." Stoic shifted the sack away from his son's plucking fingers. "Go bring the other bags in. And I brought one of your blankets. Wasn't sure if you'd be getting any sleep tonight, but you have it if you need it."

"Thanks Dad."

Then Hiccup turned to face the monster of a truck.

Some of Stoic's duties as a dragon hunter required him to go by the road less traveled, then **off** the road less traveled and then into areas where roads were long-forgotten myths. Often while hauling some forty pounds of equipment with him. Facilitating this meant purchasing a vehicle roughly half the size of a tank.

Truck-zilla had lasted a few faithful years of service thus far, but the sheer size of it was almost embarrassing. Hiccup was barely tall enough to see across the hood if he was standing beside it and if it weren't for the grab handles and step bars, someone would had to have given him a boast just to get in.

He climbed into the back seat of the truck; Jack followed him far enough in to make himself useful. On the bench seat were three brown paper sacks. One sack contained two boxes of pancake mix and pre-packaged biscuits. The second was stacked with six-packs of soda cans. And the third was filled to the brim with a variety of candy. Hiccup felt cavities form in his teeth just looking at it all.

"Did you guys clean all the chocolate out of the candy aisle?" Hiccup wondered, digging through the bags and bags and bags of various candies. He didn't see anything that didn't contain chocolate. "I feel like we're chumming the waters with all this."

"In my defense, I didn't spend the week surrounded by a bunch of hormonal teenage girls, so how was I supposed to know they'd all sync up? But if you don't want to be the one who gets mobbed, I'll take the candy sack." Jack offered, reaching for it.

"Uh-uh, you take the one with all the soda. I've done enough heavy lifting this week." Hiccup handed him the sack in question. He also passed over the one with the breakfast supplies. "And this one."

"Hey!"

Hiccup snatched up the last item on the seat, his favorite fleecy blanket that his dad had gotten him for Christmas years ago. Folded up, it felt thicker than usual. He groaned when he found his red parade shirt and khaki shorts nestled between the main fold.

"So much trying to leave this at home." he muttered, tossing the folded blanket into the top of the candy sack.

"It's supposed to rain tomorrow morning." Jack reminded him consolingly.

"Not hard enough to wash out the parade." Hiccup predicted sourly, scooting out of the truck. He hopped out and shut the door, then they set off back towards the school doors.

* * *

**2nd A/N:** Jack and Hiccup would not shut up. I swear to god they would not shut up. There is an entire block of dialogue that I ripped out because it kept sending the chapter off into different directions and I just couldn't get them out the freaking door in time without sending the word count over five thousand.


End file.
